Sarutobikai!
by boacojn
Summary: In a peaceful world, Naruto and Sakura's second son plots on how to help both himself and his friends succeed in Konoha's new competitions. NaruSaku Marriage AU. Non-Ch700 pairings only. Lots o' OC kids. M for Language, Violence, Sex Stuff.
1. Whirlpool's Harbor

_I was a really wild little kid._

_I tried harder to do stupid things than anyone else. I got angrier about stuff than anyone else. I was more embarrassed about how I looked than anyone else._

_I loved to fight back then. I'd jump on my dad everyday he came back from work, pulling his hair, biting the back of his neck, cackling as I wrapped my arms around his throat and my little legs swung harmlessly against his back._

_I think I wanted to be the Hokage at one point. Not just like my dad, but the best one, better than the rest of them combined._

_I didn't know about the ocean I was setting myself up for and how far I'd have to swim to get to the other side of it._

_On a bright summer day ten years ago, holding my Mom and Dad's hands as they dropped me off at the academy for the first time, my six-year-old self was given a chance to make his dreams come true._

_When I could finally take my first steps, I eagerly dashed ahead trying to leave all my peers behind._

_Together, hand-in-hand with the girl I liked, we ran across that ocean while everyone else was trying to swim. I wanted to fly when everyone else would walk, advancing further and further, to one day reach beyond that sky that only my father had ever flown._

_And then one day—it all stopped._

_I held out my hand, and tried to form a Rasengan in my palm._

_I focused my mind as hard as I could, and blue chakra spun around at the base of a forming sphere._

_And then it disappeared. Before I could figure out why it did._

_My legs stopped. I tried again, but it was harder this time. I was losing control of everything I had learned._

_I felt the girl that I had been with this whole time slip from my fingers. She ran on ahead, while I was trying to figure out why I was stuck in place._

_I felt someone else pass me, then someone after that._

_By the time I looked up, I was staring at the backs of everyone else, watching them disappear in the horizon._

_The chakra in my hands was no longer the blue like the sky and ocean. It had turned green, and I couldn't find out how to make it go back. My defect as a shinobi._

_Man…I hate having this dream._

…

…

A late Spring's Sun blazes down on the dirt path leading into the village.

The cicada chirps played on an infinite loop in the background, and I drowned them out by turning the fan up to max in my station at the village gate. Like most days, I'm wearing the standard blue-and-green uniform today. Unfortunately, long sleeves were the incorrect choice.

When it gets hot like this, guard duty drags on at half-speed. The line of merchants and ninja looking to get their rubber stamp out of the village is twice as long, and the rubber stampers work twice as slow.

It's not enjoyable for anyone involved in the process. No one likes it. It's the most boring part of any mission in existence, and it's not even really necessary. The only reason I'm here is because I won the lottery where they throw in all the names of mid-level guys like me and pick who has to work the gates for the day. And by win, I mean I lost.

"Yo. Next." I bury my cheek into an upright fist and mutter what I'm supposed to say. A foreign ninja, a fifty-or-sixty-something Prewar from Suna, walks up to my window.

"Name?"

"Ah, Baki."

He hands me his pass, the rank on it one of those irregular titles that goes above Jounin. Looks like he's some bigshot back in his home village.

"Reason?"

"Diplomatic Mission, B-Rank. All the mutual documentation is right here…" He hands me a bunch of papers written by the higher-ups of each of our villages. I skim through to make sure nothing looks forged, and then stamp his pass to leave. Apparently, his mission was something along the lines of bureaucratic work involving the upcoming Shinobi Exchange between villages.

When I go to hand everything back to him, I notice he's got a bit of a curious look on his face.

"Say, you…is that…"

…Hm?

Could he have…recognized who I am? I started bleaching my hair blond recently, so maybe…

"Behind you, she…"

Oh.

He tilted his head and looked past my shoulder, into the little wooden shack we have set up for approving people coming in and out of the village. Sitting behind me in perfect seiza-style is a kunoichi wearing a dark kosode and a violet hakama; and an unpainted, featureless, porcelain mask.

…I don't know how she's able to sit like that for so long without saying anything. It'd drive quite a few people I know nuts.

"Is she…Anbu?"

I guess it's normal enough for me, since I always have at least one following me around and everything. But if I consider it from someone else's point of view, it might be a little weird.

It was strange enough to see Anbu out in the open in this day and age. Seeing one in out-of-place old-school clothes (instead of the standard steel flak jacket and black pants) and a creepy-plain mask had to be even weirder.

"Ah, she's just here for extra security." I smiled. "Don't mind her. Next."

I usher him out of the village with a couple waves of my hand before he starts asking too many questions. Technically, I wasn't lying. She's here to guard something, it's just not this entrance to Konohagakure. That's my job. What she's here for is to guard me.

Not that that's really necessary either. These days there are a dozen scouts posted in every nearby town, 24/7 patrols combing through everything within a twenty kilometer radius of the village, day/night shifts for sensors and sentries, and the strongest ninja in the world on call for backup. And all the other villages are allied with us, anyway. It's boring, but there aren't too many places safer than the four gates leading into Konohagakure.

It wasn't always like this. Apparently, a few years before the war, a couple of S-Ranked missing-nin (some shark guy and some guy with red eyes according to the pictures in the history books) managed to get inside Konoha by walking through the front door. They didn't get what they were looking for, so a few years later their boss came instead and blew up the whole village. It was a big deal.

I wonder what that's like, having S-ranked missing-nin running around. It's rare these days, but when it does happen; missing-nin tend to escape, get caught, get talked down to by some old guy with stories, and sent back home all in about the course of a day. Escaping long enough to join some mysterious organization is pretty hard these days. And it'd really hurt your chances to get promoted, so most people don't really think about it.

S-ranked shinobi are pretty rare by themselves these days. Most of them are old dudes from the War and Prewar generations. Young shinobi, Nii-san and his overpowered Team Shinachiku notwithstanding, tend to be considered rather weak by comparison. Which makes sense. Most of us, myself included, have never really been tested in life. Real-life fights with Shinobi from other villages are pretty unheard of nowadays. Killing someone in self-defense and assassinations are even rarer.

The intent to kill and the necessity to make yourself strong enough to resist being on the receiving end of it are both dead arts for us in the Postwar Generation. And as a result, we get talked down to every now and again about how "back in my day…" things were somethingsomethingsomething.

According to what I've been told about our village's history, Dad probably would have get pissed off and made it a personal mission of his to prove everyone else wrong if this were happening when he was my age. But, it's true that we're weaker, and it's true that it's because we haven't faced hardship like they did in their days. We'd all be a lot stronger if things were still a bit like the Sengoku Jidai and we were constantly fighting and competing with each other with our lives and self-worth at stake.

Would it be worth it if we did fight each other, all for the sake of getting stronger? I dunno, don't ask me, at least not if you're expecting a debate that'll change no one's mind. That's one of those political questions that everyone already has their own answer for. I avoid those—at least when it comes to talking about them out loud.

Personally, I don't think life's that bad, even without the chance to prove yourself and be a hero. What does it feel like to watch someone hold a kunai to a twelve-year-old shinobi's throat, threatening to kill them if you don't do what they want? What does it feel like to tell their parents if you can't save them? Well, that's probably the sort of thing that you can't understand until you have a family and children of your own. Us teenagers these days don't worry about much more than asking the girl they like out or putting up with their unfair parents. A world where you have to worry about being a good enough child soldier—or where your friends have to die just so it seems like there's more drama and meaning in your life—seems like a pretty stupid thing to wish for in my opinion.

So, I just stay quiet when the old guys talk about their stories. Think I'm the only person in my family who knows how to do that.

Of course, the whole Postwar Generation isn't just like me. Young people generally don't like being talked down to day-in and day-out, and tend to react with various levels of annoyance. Most of us just shrug it off, with a typical 'can't be helped' kind of attitude. Some of us get mouthy back and tend to hold up classes and mission debriefings by getting into arguments with our teachers and superiors. And every now and again you get the take-charge types that resent the modern society that let them become soft and start wishing for the return to militarism and war for the sake of bettering themselves, vowing to change the world.

The last type tends to also be the type that runs away from home, get caught, get a lengthy lecture, and then spend the night in the bath getting the dirt out of their hair before reading an action manga and falling asleep in the same bed they fell asleep in the last night. 'Missing-Nin' is the word for them if you want to conflate them with the criminal Shinobi of old that faced interrogation and subsequent execution if they were captured, before it became acceptable to break the rules and then get away with it with no real consequences. 'Chuunibyou' is what we Postwars like to call them.

If you're wondering why I'm bringing all of this up, ranting about kids wanting to run away from home and everything, well, it's because I'm looking at one right now—

—A heap of clothes thrown on top of each other is looking up at me. They're wearing a black cloak with red clouds over a hooded sea-green coat that's already covering them head to toe, sunglasses over a swirling plastic orange mask—a knockoff replica of something that some evil guy from the War Era wore—and a piece of paper taped over the leaf on their forehead protector with the word 'secret' scribbled on it.

…All right, I might as well play along.

"Name?" I ask. I'm not that tall for a guy, but I have to look down at where her eyes should be.

"My name is…anoooo…" she looks up at the sky and thinks. She must not have planned on getting this far.

Let's just skip this one for now.

"Reason?" I ask instead.

She perks up, and answers right away:

"Top-secret assassination mission! Rank, SS!"

"SS-Rank missions don't exist." I correct her.

"Oh." She looks off to the side. I can see her plain disappointment even with her face covered up. "Just regular S then."

"Alright then. S-rank. Top Secret. Assassination." I repeat every word loud enough for the people behind her in line to hear. "And your name is…?"

"I am…um…" she looks around, trying to think something up.

Suddenly, her eyes stopped and she pointed at a nearby building. "That!"

"That…?" I followed her hand to see her pointing at a vertical sign on a restaurant with two bold-printed Kanji next to the door.

…Normally when someone is looking around to find inspiration for a fake name, they don't point at what they're trying to use and ask whoever's being lied to for it to be read it to them.

"Kin'En?" I read the sign she's pointing at.

She nodded her head vigorously. "Yeah, yeah, Kin'En. The great and mysterious Kin'En!"

"That is a no-smoking sign. That is not a name."

"Really…?" She tilts her head in disappointment. The thick strokes on the fake-calligraphy must've made her feel confident.

She put her hand to her mask and thinks. Here it comes, her trusted Plan B…

"Wait!" She shouts. She spins in place, and presses her sunglasses up against her mask. "That was merely a secret identity to cover up my real identity!"

She thrusts her arm out forward in dramatic fashion, and says it:

"I am…**Hatake Kakashi!**"

Her arm hits my wicket's countertop, not reaching the window. Hatake Kakashi has certainly gotten shorter.

"…Of course, Kakashi-san. Please, leave right away on your top-secret mission." I play along and reply after a pause.

"Really?! Yayyy!" Our would-be Kakashi prances off like the happy fifteen-year-old girl she is, waving around the dangling sleeves of the fake Akatsuki cloak that's too long for her arms. She's only a year younger than me, but sometimes she acts like we're still little kids.

…I'm thinking this this as she comes right back five seconds later.

"Oh, um." She puts a finger to where the mouth would be, on her replica Uchiha Obito mask. "Do you have any strawberry milk?"

"Of course, Kakashi-san. Here you go." I hand her a filled glass bottle with an attached straw from under the counter. Obviously this isn't the norm, but I already figured she was going to do something like this when I started today, so I prepared ahead of time.

"Yayyyy!" She shouts again and runs off, some of her loose bugs following in her trail.

I wait until she turns around the corner, and then I pick up the cable phone.

"Hey, guys? Shino-chan escaped from the village again…no, not the dad, the daughter. Aburame Shinoko. She's wearing about three layers of clothes, so she might get Heat Exhaustion in this weather if she runs for too long…well yeah, she's stronger than me, but she's not that strong. She won't fight you."

The Jounin on the other line says thanks and I hang up. About ten seconds later, I hear a screech of defeat from a girl on the other side of the wall.

Sorry, ex-teammate. I think I just betrayed you.

"Next!" I shout. The day's not getting any shorter. I'll talk to her about her escaping habits later.

A fat merchant with a round nose and smile comes up to the window. I ask for his name, he gives it to me. I ask for his reason, he says trade.

He asks me to sign my name on some papers verifying that he paid the village taxes and lawfully abided by our rules. I sigh, and get out a pen.

Most of Konoha's shinobi have names written in kana. Legally, my first name's written in katakana and my last name's written in hiragana on my birth certificate, but I like to sign it in a kanji variant when I can. It's a little more inconspicuous in my case.

Let's see, I'll drop the 'ki' okurigana from 'whirlpool', use the character for 'port' to replace my given name, and…

* * *

**渦****  
****巻****  
****港**

* * *

He squints and looks at my signature. It's unusual for a name, since it doesn't have any nanori readings, but it looks like he can still read it. "U—zu…ma—ki…minato? Ah, Uzumaki Minato? Like the Sixth and Fourth Hokages, right?"

"Ahaha…" I laugh and nervously rub the back of my neck. "Not really."

* * *

**A/N:** Hey there. Chapter's over, so you can go ahead and skip this commentary part.

Basic AU's that Naruto and Sakura hooked up instead of the canon stuff. I don't remember the War Arc or anything else after the Pain Arc very well, so it's all in an 'only kind of happened' state for me and this story, along with all that anime-only stuff and movie stuff that I never watched. You can yell at me about this in that white box below if you want.

I know bits and pieces about Boruto from Youtube videos and other secondhand knowledge, but I've never watched the show or read the manga, so no spoilers from me on that front. Anything in this fic that's similar to stuff in the post-698 canon is either pure coincidence or something subconscious from the bits and pieces that I know about it.

There'll be a some background Narusaku in this fic, but it'll be more about their kids and their kids' friends. There're a lot of writers better than me that have written about how they could have gotten together, so I'll let you guys fill in that blank for yourself.

I am usually very, very slow to update, so be ready for that if you want to follow this fic.

Reviews appreciated, but don't feel obligated. It's more than enough for me if you're simply willing to read.

**I don't own Naruto.**

GL;HF


	2. Orange World

The afterwork wind of a low sun and an orange sky blows, chilling the undripped sweat stuck to my face. I'm looking down at a palm-sized balloon filled with air in my hands, trying to get my chakra to swirl around the right way.

In a day and age where most villagers both young and old default to Yobisute when addressing each other, there's usually a specific reason when a girl adds '-kun' at the end of your name.

The most cliché one is because she likes you. I'm not experienced in that sort of thing, but I can guarantee with 100% certainty that that's not the case here. The girl I'm walking with is in love with some idiot who doesn't recognize it. I just happen to be a familiar third wheel in this whole process.

It's just us on the dirt road to the secret base today, passing by the sleepy scenery of an old residential district, rebuilt to look like it did before the War. If it were up to me, I'd be walking there by myself, but I don't get a choice in the matter. And on the flipside, I know she'd rather be spending time with my older brother like she usually does, but she's still pretty nice about being assigned to guard me.

It's probably best that I try to be considerate to her in turn.

"Hey, Tsunako-san? Sorry for dragging you out here like this." I talk to the silent Anbu that sat behind me today during my short-term stint as a gate guard. Her name is spelled with the characters for 'moon', 'facing', and 'child'.

It's not standard for me to know the name of the Anbu guarding me for the day, but she's part of Nii-san's personal squad and a lifelong friend of his, so naturally we know each other outside of this forced situation we're in.

It's probably also a little overly-cautious for me to add '-san' at the end of her first name, considering how close she is to our family, but I might as well err on the side of politeness.

"It is no trouble, Minato-kun. Please do not worry yourself about it."

She looked at me through that creepy, featureless, porcelain mask of hers. She looks a bit like a horror movie villain when combined with her unusual dress, but I'm used to it.

One of her palms rested on top of the hilt of the sword attached to her hip—an Oowakizashi, a curved blade slightly shorter in length than the more common katana—with the kanji for 'Moon' carved into its wooden sheath.

Technically, how we address each other should be the other way around, seeing as how she's the bodyguard and I'm the guy she's supposed to protect for the day. But outside of her duties to protect and serve members of the Hokage's family, she's my superior in rank and as a ninja, so it can go either way. Not that I'm really interested about who's in charge of who. Theoretically, I could try to order her to attack someone unprovoked or do menial tasks like fetching me food and cleaning my room. But most people tend to resent spoiled rich kids who throw around their parents' names, so I'll pass.

Be humble, be observant, praise others and do what you can to empower them. You can get by pretty easy in life just by following those rules, even without a special technique or a drive to be the best.

—We come up to a split in the road, taking the path leading in to one of the many forests that regrew following Pain's Assault. My friends' secret base is further on ahead.

The wind picks up again, playing the woodwind instrument of springtime trees in the breeze.

I look over to my side. I catch something more than just the green of the leaves dancing in my sight.

Her hair dark, somewhere within that blurred border between dark brown and black, fluttered in the wind. That hakama and kosode combo of purple-and-black flew along with it, that ever-waving hem justifying itself against the backdrop of a world dyed in orange.

Those miko-like clothes of hers look so out of place in modern society, but I think that's part of her charm. In an age where most kunoichi wear the standard blue-and-green flak jacket getup or something that's generally easy to get around in, I don't think too many of them would be brave enough to try to pull off the traditional clothes thing in broad daylight.

It's a shame she wears her Anbu mask all the time. She has a really pretty face underneath it.

"Nice day, huh…?" I say, breaching the comfortable silence.

"Yes," Tsunako put her hands in front of her waist and laced together her fingers as naturally as a shrine maiden. "A beautiful day."

Her manners feel so natural and effortless. If she were on a mission that required her to take the fake identity of a traditional daughter working at a sleepy ryokan along a beaten road, she probably wouldn't need any practice at all in order to blend in. Guess that's useful for an assassin.

Man…I'm a little envious. She's spoken for and I'm three years younger than her, but I wish there were normal girls like her that were my age. All of the ones I hang out with are a bunch of weirdos.

"Minato-kun."

I nooked my neck over my shoulder and looked back at Tsunako when she called my name.

Her eyes, or at least what I could guess of them beyond that mask anyway, held a serious demeanor. "There is no issue with you spacing out or elsewise getting lost in the day, but please walk either beside me or behind me. I need to be able to protect you if the need arises."

"Ah, fine, fine." I slow down a bit, matching her pace. I must've wandered off a little while I was daydreaming.

Not that it really matters. I've never been attacked or subjected to a kidnapping attempt my entire life.

In fact, why's she even bothering to tell me this? I've had bodyguards follow me around for as long as I can remember. It's like she thinks I don't know the emergency protocols inside and out at this point, what with all the drills I had to do as a kid and everything.

I'm thinking this, and then suddenly—with a sharp rustling of a bush at Four O' Clock—hear the sound of glass breaking nearby—

"**Ah!**" Tsunako-san gasped and her eyes went wide, her body above the waist recoiling away from the direction of sound. "Over there!"

My body snapped into action and I instinctively jumped in front of her, spreading one of my arms back and around her, one of my unused kunai drawn in my hand.

I narrow my eyes and look forward, see a broken glass bottle next to some low-lying branch and a shuriken, and…

…No one there?

"Fufu." I hear a light, familiar laugh behind me. I turn around towards the source.

Behind me, Tsunako-san had a slipped a hand underneath her mask, covering up her mouth.

…Tch. She must've thrown the shuriken herself and acted surprised in order to gauge my reaction. Must be Shinachiku's influence at work on her.

"Yeah, yeah. I get it. I'll make sure to stay behind you if someone shows up." I get a little irritated. She had made her point.

When I take a glance back at the source of the sound, her guilty shadow clone is already cleaning up. She must've performed Kage Bunshin no Jutsu to place the bottle there and then knocked it over with a shuriken right after chastising me. That's not very advanced in itself, but she was able to predict what my reaction would be and do all of it without me noticing.

"I know. You're normally very careful, but deep down you have this really hotheaded side to you like the rest of your family does." She smiled, just a bit visibly through the gap between her face and the mask. "You're a good person, Minato-kun."

A girl's smile can mean a lot of things, depending on the context. I think I'll take it as a 'big sister-little brother' kind of thing in this case.

I suppose I should be thankful I have someone so devoted to our family watching out for us. If someone were to kidnap or kill Dad (hint: impossible), we'd just get a new Hokage and life in the village would go on more or less the same. But if they were to kidnap one of the Hokage's children and hold them hostage, well, we'd suddenly have a much worse crisis on our hands.

Besides, with my current 'defect', I wouldn't be able to do much against someone trying to attack me. It's necessary for me to be protected, much as I hate to admit it.

Not that I can remember anyone ever trying to kidnap me. Pretty much everyone in the known world loves Dad thanks to what he did during the War, but I guess the potential risk warrants having someone follow me around all the time.

As for how capable she'd be in that situation…well, we can test that right now!

"Hey, Miss Special Ops Lady." I get her attention. "If you're done teasing me, could you help with something? …Here, hold this." I hand her one of the palm-sized balloons that Dad gave me to train with.

"Hm?" She holds the balloon delicately between her fingertips. "This?"

"Yeah, but hold it out and away from your body with one hand. Try to focus your chakra and spin it into a sphere like Nii-san does."

"Like Shina-kun?" She repeats and then tries to replicate the jutsu, closing her eyes and focusing her chakra.

The balloon in her hand rips from the inside, and scatters to a thousand shreds. It's replaced—for a single second—by a spinning ball of vibrantly blue chakra that disappears as quickly as it appears. An incomplete version of the A-ranked ninjutsu.

'Normal' girls are not to be pushed around, apparently.

"That's pretty amazing. You've never trained it before, and you can skip right past steps 1&2 and move right on to the containment part at step 3. You're already better at this than I am." I remark the honest truth.

"Oh, no, no, no, no, no…" She puts both of her hands up and waves them in rejection, trying to maintain her modesty. "I can only do this much because of several years of chakra control training on my part. I would need to train for at least six months to refine the shape manipulation aspect well enough to learn the next part, let alone try to inject my chakra nature in the part after that. I'm not nearly as amazing as your family is at it."

She rambles on about how she's not that great, but it's pretty easy to see through her words.

Not that I should be surprised or anything. Prewar and War Era Anbu used to have a reputation for getting stomped on by the conga line of increasingly powerful villains that kept popping up, but Postwar Anbu is a bit different. Thanks to some backroom conspiracy with some organization named after a tree or something, Dad retired all of the old guard when he took office and hard-capped Anbu membership at an even 40 members in total. Ten squads of four, headed by nine Squad Captains and one Anbu Commander. This gave the Hokage more direct oversight, and increased the average skill of those who were able to grab one of those now highly-competitive spots. The folks wearing the animal masks today are no joke.

…If I needed to, how would I beat someone like that?

I looked down at the shredded remainder of the balloon on the ground.

This is how the technique has always been handed down. From my Dad down to me, down to my Dad from the Toad Sage, and up to him from my own namesake. If I never learn it, I'll never be able to pass it down myself.

I've been trying to master the Rasengan for eight years now. I've been stuck on the final phase for seven.

My brother mastered it after a year's worth of training when he was nine. My Dad mastered the stage I'm on in exactly one week when he was twelve. I think my little sister is getting close too.

I had turned sixteen earlier this year.

"Haaaa…"

I closed my eyes, shrugged, put up my palms up to the sky and parallel to the ground—and sighed with a little grin.

"Hm?" Tsunako looked over at me while we kept walking forward.

"Nothing." I replied as I hooked my fingers back together and rested my head back against my hands. "This high level stuff's just not my forte."

Well, no use in having an inferiority complex and getting depressed about it. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, after all.

I gaze up at that distant, sleepy sky—its warm orange watching over the world. Some kids were playing in the adjacent neighborhood, their laughter carried in a wind that was too weak to be of a storm, too strong to be lonely. This peaceful world, the one that generations of hard work had afforded, kept moving at its own pace.

…Everything felt just like it should be.


	3. Sarutobikai?

**猿****  
****飛****  
****会****  
!**

* * *

'Sarutobikai!'

A hand-drawn work of calligraphy by our fearless leader marks the entrance into our secret base.

Historically; The Sarutobi Clan was once Konohagakure's largest landholder, in large part thanks to the First Hokage's tendency to hand out political favors when the Five Villages were still in their infancy.

By the time the Third Hokage took power, however, most of his clan's holdings were vastly underdeveloped. Instead of letting them sit around in his pocket while he was too busy to economize any of them, Sarutobi Hiruzen turned most of his clan's private holdings over to the village for use as public land. Many of these would become the forests and training grounds that ubiquitously dot the village today—including the Third Training Ground, where my parents and a few other famous genin teams before them ended up taking the bell test.

Today, we're in the only forest that's still part of their private ledger. It doesn't have an official name, but we call it Monkey Forest after their clan's etymology. And that abandoned traditional-style house that I'm standing in front of? You can call that the Sarutobi Compound, reconstructed to look just like it did before the Shinra Tensei. Or—you could call it my friends' secret base—The Sarutobikai HQ. The current head, Konohamaru, lives in a modern house in town, and lets his daughter use this place along with her friends as a hidden getaway—provided that we keep everything clean and don't rack up the electricity bill.

I offered Tsunako-san the chance to come inside and say hi, but she turned me down. Something about how she needed to watch out for potential intruders. More likely—she probably just doesn't have any desire to socialize with anyone outside of Shinachiku's circle of friends and relatives. Seems a bit of a loner thing to do, but I guess it makes sense that an Anbu type wouldn't be warm and bubbly around strangers.

Well, whatever. Let's go inside and see who all showed up today.

I slide open the rice-paper shouji with the name of our collection of mishaps on it, kicking off my sandals at the wooden landing. The first thing that fills my sight is a banner hanging from the rafters, the Sarutobikai Creed written in vertical characters—

* * *

**As I turn my back on the burning wasteland—**

**I see no miracles or light before me,**

**Only the Will of Fire to guide ahead.**

**I feed on the unwavering spirits of my friends—**

**And with my own power, in my own way—**

**I forge my own path, and push forward!**

* * *

Man, it's been years since Koyoka came up with that…think even as a kid she was always trying to find ways to motivate us and make us try our best…I don't get how she can come up with this stuff and never get embarrassed.

When I step inside and undo the knot of my forehead protector, I'm greeted by a still heat that's hotter than outside. These old houses all have thin walls and single-glazed windows, so it's too expensive to put in central heating and cooling. Probably one of the main reasons the Sarutobi Clan lives somewhere else.

When we were little kids, we used to not have any running water or electricity here either. Luckily, I picked up a few construction ideas in my D-rank missions and managed to add them in during my spare time. With a bit of handiwork shared between myself and the seven other members in our group, some of the comforts of modern society have managed to pervade this haven of ours.

I hang my Konohagakure headband on a coat rack and see a mirror near the entrance when I do, my blue eyes locking in on themselves. To be honest, I'm really not a muscular or broad-shouldered kind of guy, I just look kinda normal…slim, I guess that's the word. I got a bit of Mom's forehead, and fake-blond hair that reaches a little long for a guy. It's fairly smooth in shape, not at all like the shape of Dad's. Shinachiku's the one who inherited the spiky, vibrant yellow-blond hair. I just got Dad's eyes.

I check to make sure none of my natural hair color is standing out right now. I don't like to really talk about it, but…let's just say I really didn't get Dad's hair. In more ways than one.

…Well, let's not think about it and just do a rollcall.

"Oiiiiii!" I put one of my palms next to my mouth and shout down the hall, calling all the girls' names first. "Anyone else show up today? Koyoka? Shino-chan? Nami…?"

It's probably a given that Nami isn't here. Shinachiku's assigned to watch her today, which means they're probably off somewhere training together to their heart's content.

And Koyoka—that fearless leader of ours—is on a B-ranked mission out-of-the-country right now, so it makes sense she's not here either. She likes to show up and disappear like the wind, though, so you can never really count her out.

"Jouji, Gajou, Taishi, Minato...why did I say my own name too?"

Not to mention two of the guys' names I just called aren't even in the village on a long-term basis right now...think I'm just saying everyone's name out of reflex.

I keep rattling off my friends' names as I walk by the numerous fusuma that Nami and Koyoka drew on and painted together, occasionally catching a peek into an ajar sliding door to see one of our messy tatami mat rooms. Looks like I'll have to get on them about cleaning up after themselves again.

I pass by the bathroom, the storage room—think Jouji has some weights in there and Gajou has some expired dry dog food from before he left for Suna…

Then the weapons room (kunai, shuriken, random ninja tools, scrolls carrying some or all of the above), the girls' room (it's a four-and-a-half mat room used for privacy when we need to split up and change, the guys' room is on the opposite side of the house for the obvious reasons)…

Eventually I come to the back-left corner of the Sarutobikai base. On one of those white-paper sliding doors; there's a stylized version of the character for 'Meal'/'Foodstuff' that looks like it was done by a noble whose passions are calligraphy and surrealist art, and underneath that is a crude drawing of a hungry-looking fox with big eyes and teeth.

I notice the shape of someone's shadow on the other side. 6 out of 8 of us are absent today, so by process of elimination, it's safe to say this is the guy who shows up every day—

"Inoi?"

"**SHUT UP!**"

Bulls-eye. Let's go screw with him.

I slide open the fusuma leading into the kitchen we have set up…this place has come a long way from the old microwave and instant noodle stash it used to be. We have a bunch of secondhand appliances that make it look almost like a real kitchen. We don't have a separate dining room, but we did manage to snag a pretty nice-fitting chabudai with some bedpillows in place of zabuton.

Sitting cross-legged at the low-table is a dangerous-looking delinquent with platinum blond hair and two pierced ears. He was cleaning a number of gleaming shuriken and kunai he had sprawled out on the table.

Yamanaka Inoichirou—you can call him Inoi for short, or Inocchi if you're Shino-chan, or 'Ino-chan' if your name is Nara Asuma and you're his older brother (different family names due to clan inheritance issues, but both are full-blooded siblings).

A lot of people assume he bleaches his hair blond like I do to look cool, but it's actually his natural hair color.

"Yoooo. Cleaning your ninja tools?"

"It's none of your business. I just happened to pick up Shinoko's ninja tools and decided to clean them for her since they were filthy." He tells me off and then subsequently answers my question.

"Mmm? Shino-chan's here?" I take a seat next to him and imitate his slack cross-legged style. Seems like only five out of the eight of us are absent today.

He stands up with some sort of indignation on his face—

"Who cares? Go bother someone else and die. Shinoko's lying down in the mission room in the back."

You might have noticed one of those three sentences above is not like the other. This is normal.

Inoi walks over to the fridge and grabs a jug of barley tea, sealed with wax wrap he put over the cap to keep it fresh. Then, he hands me a cup and pours.

"Here, you're sweating. Take this." He says, with some unfitting scowl on his face.

"Ah, cool…thanks, Inoi." I take a sip and feel the dry path down my throat rejuvenate back into life. He always makes tea just the way I like it.

"Don't get the wrong idea." He pouts as if he were a girl with blonde twintails in some manga. "I just made too much and didn't want to dump it all in the sink."

"Uh-huh. Yep." I keep my thoughts to myself as I sip. Chances are he noticed how hot it was and decided to make enough for everyone.

"Yeah, and here's a slice of cake if you're hungry." He pulled out another self-prepared item from the fridge and served it in front of me with a clean fork and plate. "But I'm not doing it for you or anything. I just made too much and it'd be too much of a pain to eat it all myself."

I quietly take a bite, completely unsurprised by this whole turn of events. This is pretty typical of us.

The cake's flavor is vanilla with lemon-buttercream icing. Kind of a sweet-sour-sweet-sweet taste.

"Ku, oishiii…" I put an elbow on the table and bury one of my cheeks into my free hand. I like to think I'm pretty good at cooking, but Inoi has me soundly beat on the baking front. "I love you too, Inoi-kunnnn. Can we get married, already?" I exaggerate a fake-girlishness in my voice and put both my palms on my cheeks, two upward streams of pink hearts emanating around my face.

"What the hell?!" He stands up with an open mouth and gritted teeth. "Don't be so disgusting, moron. I'm gonna go water the flowers since you're being so annoying. Later." He turns a cold shoulder to me a bit haughtily. That paled blond hair of his and those two earpiercings really make him look the part of a local gang leader with the reigns over a back alley and a few punkish teenagers.

I snicker a bit at him getting pissed off. I don't swing that way either, but it's fun to mess around with him at least.

He grabs a watering can with a bright sunflower emblazoned on the side and slides open another rice-paper shouji leading outside. The cicadas were dying down, the late-day sun making its last round on Fire Country before night.

…So, what would you say about a delinquent that always tries to help his friends, always shows up fifteen minutes early for missions, and likes watering flowers?

Well, that's Yamanaka Inoichirou—the second child of Shikamaru-sensei and Yamanaka Ino, the resident Sensor Type of Sarutobikai, and one of my former genin-teammates. The path of the male tsundere can be a rather arduous one indeed, but he seems determined to cut his own way through this unknown darkness of his.

Since he's here, I might as well put his personality to use.

I get up and grab another cup from the cabinet—

"Hey! Inoi!" I shout at him through the open sliding door while I'm pouring another cup of tea. "Remember Tsunako? You know; dark hair, creepy Anbu mask, kinda short, built like a stick, wears festival clothes and follows my older brother around all the time…? She's out front standing guard. Could you give this to her?" I held up the cup of tea between cupped palms.

"Whatever" Inoi said with a furrowed brow like he wanted nothing to do with me, before doing exactly what I asked him to do.

Tsunako's the passively considerate type, which means she'd refuse something as simple as something to drink for fear of somehow being imposing. However, Inoi's the aggressively considerate type, which means he's going to hand her something first, then say 'but I'm not doing this for you or anything' before walking away with his back turned to our local Anbu guard's bewilderment. And thus, the world will keep spinning.

I pour a third cup of cold tea into a fresh glass. There's a certain art to dealing with stubborn people. Most people just give up and give in, since it's easier to avoid the problem than to deal with it—but I've been around stubborn people my entire life. And believe it or not, out of the genin that were assigned to the dysfunctional Team Shikamaru, Inoi's actually the most normal one out of the three of us. He's pretty smart, too, he just doesn't like to show it off.

Unfortunately, there's someone here that's worse than either of us—

* * *

**A/N:** Lemme know if you want me to insert a glossary at the end of any chapter for the Romanized Japanese words (e.g. fusuma, shouji/shoji, chabudai, etc). I try not to go too crazy with inserting romaji words from my beloved moonrune language, but there are certain terms I can't find an English equivalent for/don't sound right in my head when replacing. A Google Image search of anything you don't understand will probably do a better job explaining it than I could.

Also, I apologize in advance for a particular line that is going to pop up two chapters from now. You will understand why I am sorry when you see it (EDIT: This particular line has been postponed, you are safe for now).


	4. Some weird girl I know

They say scary-looking fathers tend to have innocent daughters.

Personally, Aburame-san—Aburame Shino (the dad, not the daughter)—creeps the hell out of me. With that weird way he talks, and those eerie intervals of silence, and that creepy-looking incognito mode getup.

Based on my memories as a ten-year-old child, I remember Aburame Shino being about fifty meters tall and possessing an enslaved house-sized housefly, which he rode on every night to catch children out after dark and then liquefy them into digestible tissue to feed to his billions of mutant hexapods. Or at least that's where my imagination went when he came to pick up his daughter one day at our secret base, me just kinda standing there, looking up at that hoodied supervillain inert in front of the doorway.

The Aburame Clan doesn't really socialize with other villagers. And the rest of us don't really go out of our way to talk to them. They're headquartered in a giant subterranean hive underneath Konohagakure—a tunneling complex where all manners of creepy things cling to cavern walls and swarm freely in the air; occasionally landing on their human hosts so they can dig through the pores of the skin, every now and again a bug crawling up through the gaps between the eyes and the eyelids.

Or at least that's what I've heard about the Aburame Compound. Personally, I've never been. Have never wanted to. No one in the village wants to. The local bug people just don't give off that warm neighborly glow, you know?

As for what Aburame Shino is really like, I don't know. As head of one of Konoha's three noble clans, he comes over to the Hokage Mansion sometimes for council meetings. My own parents seem to be used to him, but I get the feeling that Aburame-san gives the impression that he gave to me to a lot of people—including kids that could have potentially socialized with his daughter when she was growing up.

Given the way that her dad is her father, and her clan is her family, I guess it makes sense that Shinoko is Shino-chan—

"—Yoooooo! My favorite runaway? Wherrre—arrre—youuu?" I shout my objective as I slide open a fusuma painted with a Koyoka-drawn picture of a giant slug fighting a two-headed demon. It led into our makeshift mission/war room in the Sarutobi Compound's far back corner—right between the empty washitsu where all of us used to lay out our futons as academy students and sleep together on the weekend, and the miniature library that we've stuffed bookshelves full of with ten years' worth of our favorite books and manga.

Back in our academy days, our War Room used to just be empty space with floorboards and a map in the middle. Koyoka would make us sit in a circle around it while she plotted missions for us to track down the summer ice cream stall or send scouts to scope out the playground.

We still have the map hanging on the wall, with all of our childhood scribbles intact, but thanks to a D-ranked recycling mission a few years ago we also have a used long table and some secondhand chairs. Another new addition is a big whiteboard that our leader likes to use to plan out our usual mischief or write random inspirational mission statements on…right now it just says 'Never Give Up!'

And lying down defeated in the corner is a curled up figure, wearing a hooded sea-green coat, with something black-and-red covering her up further. The hood of her coat is pulled over her hair, and overlaying her coat is that very unnecessary black-and-red thing. Namely, she's wearing a fake Uchiha Obito robe-and-mask (she got it at a novelty store for 190 ryou, in the smallest size that's still too big for her).

It's the same would-be missing-nin that I saw while working gate duty earlier today.

"Hey, Shi-no-ko." I nudge her with my foot, and she doesn't move. "Ohayougozaimasu. Moshi-Mossshhhhhhhh. A third phrase. Wake up."

She's dead silent, and doesn't move at all when I poke her in the side with my toe. She must've gotten a hard hour-long lecture from Ibiki-san about why going AWOL for fun is bad.

…Wait…

Could she have…collapsed from exhaustion? Did she faint…? What if she was dehydrated or suffering from severe chakra depletion…?

"Hey, Shino-chan." I say her name again, this time a little more bluntly.

Ah, no way…

"Hey, Shinoko!" I shout this time. Still no response.

I crouch down and check her pulse. About 65 BPM…good, that's a healthy resting rate. I take off her mask and check her airflow…why's she wearing sunglasses underneath her mask too? Whatever, I'll take these ones off too. Her breathing seems normal.

It's when I brush aside some of that scraggly hair, colored some unremarkable shade of light brown—she doesn't really take care of it, not really a priority when you cover yourself up all the time—and check her forehead for a fever that I notice…

"…Fwaaa…" She makes a mousy groan in her sleep from the feel of my hand.

Eh…?

…She's perfectly fine. I'm being way too overdramatic.

That's right, she's been like this since we were kids. She's always been a deep, quiet sleeper, as if her body tried to subconsciously make itself small in presence as well as size.

The fact that I came to the early conclusion that she was in some state of medical emergency is, frankly, ridiculous. Guess I'm a little too invested in my position as the team healer.

"_The embarrassment of being overcaring only lasts a minute, but the regret of being apathetic and thinking it's nothing can last a lifetime._"

I brush off those words Mom once told me in her capacity as a medic-nin, ingrained in my body from the years of training under her. Luckily, there were no onlookers here to tease me about it.

"A-ahhh…" Shino-chan groans as I pull my hand away from her, my green chakra glowing for a moment at the points where my fingertips touched her forehead. It's not intentional, but as part of my 'defect' I can't touch someone without subconsciously healing them. Judging by her expression, it seems to have made whatever dream she was having better. Maybe she had a sore throat or something…?

Eh, let's not think too hard about it. Trying to shake her awake won't work thanks to the calming effect of my healing chakra, so I should try some other method.

Now, Inner Minato, how would a normal, non-introspective teenage boy—who doesn't have all this internal dialogue with his alternate personality like I do—handle this situation…?

I put a finger to my face and look up at the multiple choice question forming in my thought bubble—

* * *

**A)** Do something mean to her in her sleep.  
**B)** Do something perverted (not interested).  
**C)** Do nothing and come back later hoping the situation has resolved itself.  
**D)** None of the above, be a decent and considerate human being instead.  
**E) **Minato, this is your brain. I was just wondering if now was a good time to talk about that one time you walked into your parents' room a long time ago and they were—

* * *

Alright, I'll go with option A.

I place the icy bottom of the glass in my hand on top of her face, pulling it back just before she reacts, and—

"**—!**"

She bolts up off the floor in an injured panic. When she does, a swarm of Kikaichuu shoots out of her body like a black cloud and scatters to every corner and inch of the room we're in, trying to find the assailant who attacked their master.

A bunch of them land on me. They get on my face, on my clothes, in my hair, all over my arms and legs…

"Guah, you guys again…" I glare, annoyed at a thousand of her little bugs crawling all over me. "Listen, none of you bite me." I set down the glass of barley tea I brought for her on the table and start brushing them off my arm, her kikaichuu docilely falling off me like clumps of smoked bees being brushed off their honeycombs by a seasoned beekeeper.

Looking at them up close; kikaichuu have a long thorax with a ribbed exoskeleton, six pointed legs designed to pierce and anchor them to the skin when they bite, compound eyes, and a hidden proboscis that they uncoil out from between their mandibles to suck out the life from their target. To most people they're scary to look at and about as creepy as most Aburame Clan members are. I was pretty unnerved at first too.

When we were younger and Shinoko didn't have as much control over her hive, they would buzz around me all the time and bite and suck out my chakra because my hair made them think I was some kind of exotic flower. Nowadays, they can sense me through their chakra receptors as 'the guy who patches her up when she gets herself stupidly hurt', so they're a lot more accepting. The only reason they're swarming on me right now is because they're searching for the culprit who put something icy on her forehead and making sure he's not after me next—myself obviously being innocent of this crime, of course.

"—Sa, samui!" Shino-chan screeches and claps her black-gloved hands against her cheeks, her mouth turning into a confused sine wave. When you're used to wearing bulky clothes that trap heat (in the middle of May for some reason), naturally you're not going to be used to direct contact with something cold on your skin.

I think if I can describe Tsunako-san as being built like a stick, then it'd be accurate to say Shino-chan was a twig. I'm only about 170 cm tall myself, but she was a scrawny creature that barely came up to my shoulders. She always wore thick clothes that covered her from head to toe, so she had really pale skin underneath too.

—She keeps her eyes firmly shut as she comes to her senses, with no realization that I sneak-attacked her into waking up. Tch, and I was hoping I could finally see what color they were, too…

There are some sickly-looking dark bags underneath her lower eyelids. She must not be getting enough sleep. Or not enough vitamins, or maybe too much eyestrain from her obsessive reading habits. Some thing or another that I need to chastise her for.

—I closed one of my own blue eyes and leaned forward with a smile; one hand behind my back, and one forming the Seal of Confrontation against my lips.

"Morning, Princess—" I said with a grin. "—Escape from the castle didn't go so well?"

"Ah, Mina-chan…?" Hearing my voice, she finally recognizes me. "Ah!"

Touching her face, Shino-chan finally realizes that I took off her mask and her (two pairs of) sunglasses.

Normally she talks a big game about learning 'mysterious SSSSS-Rank forbidden jutsu' or running away from the village and coming back ten years later to overthrow my Dad, but she becomes really meek whenever a bit of her face or body is exposed.

"Mina-chan—no, my—give it back, give them back!" Her closed eyes become a pair of arrowheads pointing at each other as she stretches out her short arms to try to take back her cosplay mask and multiple pairs of sunglasses.

"Only if you can beat me in a height contest. I win." I hold them above my head as she feebly reaches, hopping up and down. You know, she could just focus some chakra into her legs and make herself jump higher…wonder if all the sudden switches between her two contrasting personalities has caused a spike in blood pressure above the circulatory system's tolerable limits in the past, popping a vessel to her brain's frontal lobe…?

"Guuuuu." She turns on her 'pity me, I'm a girl' face. I am proud of her for garnering enough personable skills to learn this basic level of manipulation.

"How 'bout this then?" I slip my ring finger through the single eyehole on her replica Uchiha Obito mask and spin it in the air like a kunai. "Why don't you tell me why you tried to become a criminal missing-nin today? I'll give you these back then."

"I wanted to…" she covered up her face with cupped palms and used the gaps between her gloved fingers to look at me. "…Um, but, Akatsuki, forbidden ninjutsu, ah, ah, the world—take over—and stuff…" She tries to muster up one of her usual maniacal rants about wanting to join Akatsuki (an organization that has been extinct since the end of the Fourth Great Shinobi War almost twenty-five years ago), but can't.

Well, shinobi of the Aburame Clan typically don't expose their eyes to anyone but their family and loved ones, so I might be teasing her a little too much here…

"Alright, alright, hehe…" I snicker a bit and settle for something easy: "Here, you can have this back—" I gave her back her sunglasses with one hand. "—just call me 'Minato' instead of 'Mina-chan' and I'll give you back your mask too." I winked and lowered down my other arm down with my final offer.

"But…I've always called you 'Mina-chan'…" She looked down at the floor as she pressed her sunglasses tight to her face, clearly attached to her habit of sticking girly nicknames onto all of her friends…is it really that hard just to say my first name one time?

"Yeah. I know." My voice drolls out.

I used to have a very effeminate face as a kid, and my hair back then didn't do me any favors either. The first time I met Shino-chan at the academy, she mistook me for something I'm not, very shyly walked up to me, and asked:

"_Um, Mina-chan, how did you become the prettiest girl in the whole school?"_

I am a male, dammit. Even if I don't always seem like it.

"But you always let Nami-chan call you 'Mina-nii'…' she protests, dropping the 'ha' off of Hanami's name like we all do.

"Nami gets little sister privilege. Besides, at least she puts the '-nii' part at the end. It's bad enough you have to shorten my name to 'Mina' to make it sound like a girl's name, but the '-chan' part pretty much seals the deal."

"But I…want…" She forms a sad knot in here eyebrows, like she's afflicted by some great moral dilemma.

"…Okay…" After some time, Shino-chan puts on her warface, hyping herself up with a sudden sense of resolution. "Okay! I'll do my best! I just need to call you Mina-chan…to. Mi-cha-na-n-to, mi-cha-to-na-n…" she repeats a strange combination of sounds a few times like she's warming up to sing.

"Nnnng." She squeezes her eyes shut really hard and tries to get the idea into her head.

"Nnnng!" She tries as hard as she can, the skin around her eyes wrinkling from squeezing them so hard.

"**Nnnng!**" She starts vibrating like her whole body is fighting against her efforts to say my name properly, before she stops and opens her mouth—

"Mi-chan." Shino-chan finally says, after pouring her soul into attempting to rewrite her brain. We lost a syllable.

"…"

"Sorry, Mina-chan, I couldn't do it…" She looks away, unable to face the shame of her defeat.

"Ahhhh, it's fine. I don't really care." I sigh. Looks like I'm stuck as 'Mina-chan' with her, til death do us part. "Here, you can have this back." I hand her back that weird mask of hers, modeled after the one of an infamous S-class war criminal.

"Ah, Arigatou Gozaimasu!" She says excitedly as she tries to put her mask back on, getting it upside-down on the first try. I'm not sure why I'm being thanked when I was responsible for taking it away from her in the first place, but alright.

"Oh, and here, drink this." I grab the barley tea from the table and hand it to her while she's trying to fix her mask back in place. Should help her cool down from all the extra clothes she always wears.

"Doumo, Doumo! You always make the best tea, Mina-chan!" Her volume suddenly rises a good tenfold from what is was a minute ago. I think her confidence is coming back.

"But Inoi made it, I just—"

She takes a second from her frantic attempts to cover all of her skin up and gulps it down, obviously not paying attention to my explanation.

Look at me, taking credit for other people's hard work and solving problems I created in the first place…I might just have a political career in my future.

She slams the glass back down on the table in dramatic fashion, and—

—I hear her mask click in to place, signifying the psychological switch to her other self.

**And then, the lights dim.**

**A sole conic illumination shines down on a single figure, our main antagonist taking center stage. The fog machines around her give off an ambient smoke that enhances her enigmatic aura…**

"Mufufufu…" She cackles softly, some of the kikaichuu still on my body twitching and flapping their wings when she does.

**She begins her speech, pouring her heart out to the audience, to this school auditorium that seats over five-hundred people…**

…**There are actually only three people in the stands. I was dragged here against my will and am sitting in the back, closest to the exit.**

"Mwahahaha—**AHAHIIHIIHIIHIIhahahahahHAHAHAHEEEEEEE!**" She cackles likes a mousy witch. "My final form is complete again! I am Aburame Shinoko, master of the Aburame Clan's parasitic swarm and the future master of a thousand forbidden ninjutsu! Soon, the whole world will be under my grasp!" She strikes out an open hand at the world, as if to signify her goal to hold everything within it in her palm.

**The other two people in the stands are parents of the next kid who's coming up, they're looking down at their camera really excited for the part when Shino-chan leaves.**

…**On the way in, I think I saw the other dad arguing with the drama club student working the concessions stands about how salty the popcorn was…also, I might just be making up all of this stuff in the bolded text…**

"Um, why a thousand forbidden ninjutsu, exactly?" I ask nervously as I feel that parasitic swarm of hers vibrate all over my body, signaling the arrival of her chuunibyou personality.

"Because they're forbidden ninjutsu!" She raises one arm up like she's giving a salute to her invisible dark army. "The most mysterious, powerful type!"

…Remember what I said when I was walking with Tsunako-san earlier, about all the girls my age…?

"Uh, yeah, that's cool and all, but…" It's making me feel really uncomfortable now. "Could you get your insects off of me, please?"

All of the kikaichuu on my body are excitedly dancing and spinning in circles at their Queen's speech. She has a really strong connection with her hive, so they can sense and share her emotions...ah, no, please don't go up my nose, bug-on-my-face, there's nothing up there…

"Ah!" Our miniature Akatsuki mastermind yelps in embarrassment and pinches the edge of her mask with both hands, like she's punishing herself. "Ah, ah, Mina-chan, sorry! Um; Ami-chan, Kajikaji, Buzzy-kun, Miminari-chan, Ichigorabu—" She starts calling back her chakra-eating bugs one-by-one. It's really impractical, but she's given every single insect living inside her body a name.

It'd take all day for her to name every single one, but luckily the rest of them get the idea and start flying back inside her body.

All except one, anyway.

"Huh?" I notice a fat bug on my hand, clearly spoiled by the bits of food Shino-chan sneaks from her meals to her hive.

"Oh, that's Minato III!" She said really happily. "He's my favorite!"

I narrow my eyes, really annoyed, and flick him off my hand with a curled up finger.

"**MINATO THE THIRD NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!**" Shino-chan screams in despair after I fling the son I didn't know I had off to the wall. Why does that thing get the 'to' at the end of its name?!

"Calm down." I say to both of us, my eyebrows furrowed a little in frustration. "I always heal things when I touch them, remember? Look—" I point my thumb out at where that abomination of my grandfather's name ended up. 'Minato III' is buzzing happily through the air, drunk on my green chakra.

Her attitude does a quick 180 when she sees the kikaichuu she named after me land on her pointer finger.

"Ah, you're alive, I was so worried…" she strokes the fat-bug with one of her pinkies, carefully brushing against its wings so it doesn't get hurt.

I can't really tell how bugs feel, or whether they have a CNS that is complicated enough to feel emotion at all for that matter, but it seems to be twitching its legs very happily to Shino-chan's motherly care…I don't get how a girl can be so loving to a bunch of flying parasites…

"[Soon, Minato III, soon…the whole world…all of it…ours…heeheehee…]" She whispers something else under her breath.

…Actually, is she being loving or diabolical right now? I can't tell…

…Probably best I don't think too hard about it. I should take a deep breath and calm myself down.

Shino-chan really doesn't have a bad bone in her body, she's just…weird. She had a lot of trouble making friends back in the Academy. Other girls were always been creeped out by the human hive thing, and other guys treated her like she was invisible (they didn't think she was cute, which equaled no interest in talking to her). All the solitude kind of pushed her in the direction of acting crazier and crazier until she was on a completely different wavelength than everyone else. She got bullied a bit by other kids who saw her as an easy target. Mostly, though, everyone just ignored her.

I guess at this point in the story, you'd probably expect me to say I swooped down and rescued her or something like that—but I didn't. I was self-obsessed with getting stronger back then, so I was one of the guys who treated her like she was invisible. If anyone 'saved her', it was our leader—Sarutobi Koyoka. One day she noticed a bug girl muttering to herself on top of a swing outside the Academy, and—after many failed attempts at communication—she ended up forcibly dragging Shino-chan over to the Sarutobikai base to play with the rest of us. We've been stuck with her ever since.

Childhood friends…as far as Shino-chan and I go, I don't think you can really call us that. Childhood acquaintances, more like. I guess you could kind of say we're childhood friends in the same way everyone in Sarutobikai is to some degree, but if anything, I know about her the least. I only really started to talk to her when we graduated from the academy together and ended up on the same team with Inoi and Shikamaru-sensei, even then I mostly ignored her up until I got promoted and our team disbanded last year.

Most of the adults in the village tend to push off the responsibility of keeping her out of trouble onto everyone else in Sarutobikai, since we're the only ones who really know how to handle her. Which brings me to the entire reason I came over here today—

—I'm talking to her right now, because I want to ask her why she tried to run away from the village again today. Right now she's successfully avoiding the topic by making me keep pace with her eccentricity.

I'm technically a Chuunin, so I should probably try to show some kind of leadership skill here…let's think for a moment…

If I'm going to scold her, then I need to take a step back and think about her feelings and why she did it before I do. Which also means I should probably not interrogate her first thing off the ground, seeing as how she probably just heard a lecture by another shinobi today after she got caught (the contents of their said lecture likely being 'Becoming a missing-nin is bad, you shouldn't become one because it's bad' about 100 times over).

Usually a conscious effort at being direct and upfront solves most of the world's communication issues, but I think in this case I can save whatever words I have for her for later—

"Shino-chan."

"Haa!" She straightens up like she's standing at attention.

—And next time we talk, I need to get her to open up and not just automatically default to her crazy mode if I want to have a serious talk. So…

"Err…" I think for a bit. What's something that she likes…?

…Wasn't she always sticking her nose into weird books with dark-colored cover art and creepy titles, back whenever we had those two hour waits for Shikamaru-sensei to show up? I think that's an 'in' I can use to talk to her about something that makes her seem a little more human.

"…read anything good lately?" I ask after looking stupid for a few seconds.

"Ooo, I've been reading _Cask of Amonchiryado_, _The Demon-King on My Violin_, _Deathly Notebook_…" She comes down immediately from her faux-evil insect queen persona and starts naming a bunch of her favorite stories.

"_The Woman of the Bird's Shell_,_ The Blue Fruit of the Tree_,_ Tanjou to Shibou; Guree Uooden_…" she keeps rattling off titles of books that I know nothing about…uh, I think I might have heard of that last one, one time…

Geh, on second thought, I might have set her off on an inescapable tangent…

"Oh, oh! And there's these new books that are really good called _A Whirlpool of Lightning_, and—"

_A Whirlpool of Lightning_? Wait, isn't that the hot new series that's taking bookstores right now by storm? I heard it's the second best seller, right underneath the new _Icha Icha_ books…what the heck, that sounds like she's actually reading something halfway normal.

"The _A Whirlpool of Lightning_ Books? Isn't that 'that' one series that's super-popular with girls right now?" I ask.

I've overheard a bunch of the kunoichi that I work with at the hospital talk about it…don't think I've ever seen anyone read it in public, though.

"It's the best thing of all the things! They're like…like three-hundred times better than all of the other books!" Shinoko nods her head really vigorously. "It's about a Whiskers-sama who falls in love with an Uchiuchi and runs away with him to take on the great Uchiuchi Patriarch. I'm on volume four."

…Well, I have no idea what the hell she just said, but it's nice to know she has at least one hobby that she can talk about with other girls. I'd still like her to socialize with more people outside of Sarutobikai and learn how to talk a bit more like a normal person, though.

"Huh, to be honest I don't know what it's about, but I'm kinda curious." I put a hand to my chin, "you wouldn't happen to still have the first book, would you?"

"I have all twelve in our library!" She exclaims…think whoever's writing these things has to be pretty crazy in the head for them to churn out so many books in such a short time span. Maybe that's what she relates with.

I'm not really much of a reader, but it doesn't hurt to step out of your comfort zone every now and again. Besides, I like to think I'm pretty open-minded. I'm sure it's not that bad…right?

"Do you, now…? Say—"

It doesn't take much after that to convince her. After some overenthusiastic urging on her part, she lends me the first volume and we form an impromptu book club with its first meeting sometime tomorrow night. We can have a drawn-out heart-to-heart then.

For now, I should probably just get home before it gets too dark.

* * *

**A/N:** Winter has returned to the great state of Ohio, and the iced-over country roads with it. My puny Hyundai is snowed in with me here at the farmhouse. Time to write. You can skip this A/N section like always.

Should probably mention again that the story's more about their kids than Naruto and Sakura themselves, or any other canon characters. You probably remember me saying this in the Ch1 A/N, but might as well say it again. You're cool to drop the story if that doesn't appeal to you.

Next up in the exposition's onslaught of OCs is Shinachiku and Hanami (i.e. the other two Narusaku kids). Had a huge holdup in figuring out how to fit all my ideas together, but I think I get the general idea on how to write it now. It'll probably be around 30,000-40,000 words before I'm finished with Shinachiku+Hanami's intro chapters. This kills the pacing.

In case you're the type to scroll until you see Naruto and Sakura interacting with each other (they're verrrry briefly in the next one, with no physical descriptions yet), you can go ahead and skip the next dozen chapters or so. Current roadmap is Uzumaki Siblings - Interlacing Shikamaru-centric flashbacks and present-day chapters - Introduce Naruto w/ full description and by having him show up on top of Hokage Rock and giving a speech that'll set up the main conflict - Introduce Sakura w/ full description and a slapsticky moment with Naruto - Have a sweeter Narusaku moment a couple chapters later - Have some Narusaku family moments, probably explore protag internal conflict - Main conflict, probably fit another OC introduction or two somewhere before this too.

There'll be a serious lack of an overarching external conflict for a nice while. Wanted to build up the world, Naruto and Sakura's family, and some of their kids' friends before actually showing the characters doing anything exciting. A big consequence of this is a bunch of random OCs, but kinda necessary in a next-gen Naruto fic with none of the Chapter 700 pairings. Fic would definitely be a lot quicker-paced and easier to write if I could just pluck characters out of Boruto, but I've never read/watched it and I have practically no idea what goes on in the canon Naruto universe these days, so a bunch of OC kids from non-canon pairings it is.

The upcoming slow pacing would go a lot quicker if I put the OC kids in more action-orientated introductions and cut down the word count, but I have a lot of fun trying to make mundane things come to life and writing slow burns, so I get a little carried away. Besides, I got a personal love for sloppy writing that can justify itself despite its flaws. Don't know if I can pull it off myself, but I can always try. Talk to you later.


	5. An Idea

A hand frantically dashed across a sheet of paper, drawing all kinds of crude shapes and disjointed words.

They were sitting at a desk in a dimly-lit hotel room, an overview of Amegakure's industrialized skyline visible through the glass wall.

Every year, the Five Kage would travel to this village for a week of negotiations, joint statements, voicing of concerns, signing of treatises, and whatever else seemed important and could take up time. Officially, this was the primary means of diplomacy and keeping the peace between the ninja villages. Unofficially, most of the real work in those categories was accomplished through backchannels and prearranged deals, and each of the Five Kage had a good idea beforehand of what questions would be raised and what answers would be given come time of the Summit.

Having once been the torn cloth in between the pointed tips of many kunai, Ame's selection as the annual meeting ground for the Gokage Summit held a particular meaning for those who were veterans of wars past. But despite the symbolism, there was still a heavy security risk associated with village leaders and higher-ups leaving the sanctity of their village and coming into proximity with other powerful shinobi—on foreign land, no less.

As an unofficial rule, the only advisors that could travel with the Kage to the Summit were ones who could hold their own in battle against other Kage-level opponents.

The Hokage in particular had to travel here each year without his children in tow, on the advice of his Council. He was too individually powerful to be struck at directly, so the potential for damage by someone seizing his offspring was too much of a risk to tempt. Only his oldest son was Kage level, and his oldest son had no interest in advising.

—The sixth day's meetings had wrapped up early, leading him back here. He didn't like being away from his kids. But as it turns out, there were unexpected benefits from coming here this year.

He dropped his pencil and picked up his paper, looking at his handiwork:

* * *

Scrolls!

Duels!

Special Badges!

Team Battles!

Flying! (Maybe!)

A REALLY BIG TOURNAMENT!

CAPTURE THE FLAG?!

Ho

w do

I

ren

t a Castle?

WAR!

* * *

"Sakura-channnnnnnnnnn!" He called out, his eyes widened like an excited child's saucers. "I just thought up something really, really cool! Look, look!"

A woman, naked, rose drowsily from the bed; her hair disheveled from a combination of sex and post-coital exhaustion.

"…Naruto? Mmph, what are you—" She rubbed her eyes and forehead. Where did he get all of this limitless energy from…?

He dove onto the bed. He was in a state of undress, too, and with no efforts to rectify the fact. No matter how old they were, there were certain aspects of his personality that refused to change.

"It's this idea I came up with! It would be like bringing back the Chuunin Exams, but ten times bigger! I'm the greatest, right Sakura-chan?! C'mon, we'd start right here—"

Sakura's blurred vision slowly bled back into normalness, and she started by reading his plans from the very top—

There was a lot to talk about. And he would keep her up all night talking about it.


	6. Uzumaki Siblings I

Like all other forms of love in life, being a good brother or sister is all about learning how to take the good with the bad.

So, before I start complaining—and I know I'm going to start complaining, I love to do it about people related to me—let me make a disclaimer. I don't hate anyone in my family, and there's a lot of good in all of them, even though I might seem like I'm taking it for granted.

—I'm having one of my aesopic conversations with Inner Minato as Tsunako-san and I approach the giant western-style house nestled in the back of the village. There's a bit of history behind that term in the Shinobi World—'western'. Think I'll talk about it some other time.

My home was located right at the edge of Hokage Rock's shadow, near some other important buildings like the village's assembly hall and the new Academy.

I looked up at Konohagakure's most famous monument, the scalps of Dad and his predecessors outlined in the early evening's satin blue sky. From this close up, looking at the Hokage faces gave much more of a bottom-up perspective. From most points in the village, it looked like they were watching over the village. But from this angle, their eyes looked like slits, looking straight past the village and its walls, and out towards the forests, as if waiting for their chance to stare down any invaders…

…If those stone faces were any smart, they'd quit looking at those faraway trees for potential trouble and look straight down at our house. Everyone who was guilty of desecrating Hokage Rock lived there.

When the three of us were younger, Shinachiku made us swear a secret pact as siblings that each time one of us graduated from the Academy, they'd have to grab a paint bucket and a brush and vandalize the faces of our village's leaders.

When Shinachiku graduated, he climbed up the side of Hokage Rock, painted the faces of all of the Hokage, and then laughed maniacally as he was chased around by half of the village's ninja—none of which being fast enough to catch him. Then, later at home that night, he took the disciplinary yelling from Mom and the week-long grounding he got as a badge of honor, proud of the fact that he had successfully pissed all the old guys off.

Unfortunately, when it was my turn to paint the faces on Hokage Rock, Dad was ready. The day I graduated from the Academy, I climbed up to the top of the First Hokage's face, only to find Dad waiting for me with a paintbrush and bucket of his own around the Fourth Hokage's face. He started painting right when I did, encouraging me and happily shouting loud enough to draw a crowd of villagers and confused shinobi below—including a bunch of people from my own class. By the time I got to the Second Hokage's face, my own was beet red, and I couldn't paint anymore because I was using both of my hands to cover my eyes. I ran away in shame and locked myself away in my room for two days, Dad having effectively embarrassed me into giving up. It was a truly cunning dad-move on his part, and my complete defeat.

My redemption, however, came in the form of my little sister—who had been waiting for her time to shine since the moment we the Uzumaki Siblings had made that sacred promise to eachother—

When Hanami graduated from the Academy, she rushed straight from the forehead protector ceremony to the faces on Hokage Rock. And who was waiting for her on top with two buckets and two paintbrushes in his hands? It was our Dad again, ready to pull the same 'embarrass them into quitting' trick on her that he had used on me a few years before. However, when Nami started painting, and Dad started paint too—Nami's innocent happiness of being able to mess around with our Dad won out, and as time went on Dad started to forget why he was up there in the first place. They both ended up coloring the faces of our honored leaders, including a competition to see who could make the Fifth Hokage look sadder, and a collaborative mural that stretched from the Second Hokage's right cheekbone to the Fourth Hokage's left eye. This went on until night, a bunch of Dad's advisors and subordinates begging him to stop the whole time, until one of them had to fetch Mom so she could yell at both of them to come down.

Operation 'Paint Hokage Rock even better than Dad did' turned out to be a resounding success. It took three whole days for all five of us in the Uzumaki Family to wash out the combined artwork of Nami and our father, and Shinachiku got grounded for a week again for being the ringleader who put the idea in our head in the first place. It was beautiful.

—My Anbu bodyguard and I reached the gate, the beginning and end of our journey together for the day.

* * *

**火｜う**  
**影｜ず**  
**官｜ま**  
**邸｜き**

* * *

'Hokage Residence/Uzumaki'

That's what it says on the brass nameplate embedded in the brick wall, adjacent to a wrought iron gate that was always open. It looked more like an entrance to a public park than someone's house.

The New Hokage's Mansion was wider than it was tall, and with a rectangular façade and perimeter in contrast to the circular style of many of Konohagakure's older buildings. It was four stories high, each level dedicated to a particular purpose.

The first floor was open to the public 24/7 and led into a reception desk right from the front door. It was full of offices and mission debriefing rooms where a bunch of Leaf shinobi stood in line to turn in their mission reports and get paid. A lot of the day-to-day administration of the village was done there. I usually don't spend much time there myself.

The second floor was semi-restricted. You could enter if you were high-ranking, or if you received security clearance on the first floor to do something like meet with the Hokage, or if you just so happened to actually live at the Hokage's Mansion like yours truly. The second floor had the Hokage's Office, the Jounin-Commander's Office, a conference room where Dad met with members of the Council so they could yell at each other, a guest wing for foreign dignitaries visiting the village, a commercial-sized kitchen and grand dining room for really big dinners (not usually where we eat, more for when Dad hosts the one of the other Kage or some other special occasion). I spend some time here in Shikamaru-sensei's office playing shougi with him or stopping by Dad's office when I can't find him upstairs and need to let him know dinner's ready.

The third and fourth floors were entirely the private residence of the Hokage and his family. Dad put a personal fuuinjutsu around all the walls, windows, and doors on these floors that repels anyone but members of the Uzumaki Family, personal friends of ours that Dad manually added the chakra signatures of into the seal (everyone from Sarutobikai has access), and Anbu (just in case of a security emergency…pretty unnecessary even then, as long as Mom, Dad, or Shinachiku were home). It wasn't as extravagant as the Fire Daimyo's Palace in the capital, but our family's home still had plenty of unnecessary luxuries for our personal use. Like more bedrooms than there were people living there, a library and study that had a bunch of books that no one ever reads and the Scroll of Seals containing many of the village's Ninjutsu, a washitsu dojo outfitted with training gear, and a heated grand bath and frosted glass walls that gave a pretty amazing view of the village at sunrise and at night.

I think I can also mention that there's another 'secret floor' that not too many people know about. Directly underneath the Hokage's Mansion is a hidden underground complex that contains secret tunnels to the Anbu HQ, the vault where all of the money the village receives from missions and security contracts gets deposited, and a few forbidden ninja relics that Dad's sealed away. Even I'm not allowed down there—and I know from experience that the high-level guys they have posted there get really grumpy if you try to sneak in.

"—It appears we've arrived, Minato-kun. Would you like me to accompany you upstairs?" Tsunako-san spoke up as we reached the gate of this fusion of a public administrative building and a family home.

"Ah, no, no, no, it's fine." I shake my hands with gapped fingers at her. "I'm good from here on out. You don't need to babysit me anymore for the day."

"Very well. I shall take my leave." She says as she forms the Seal of Confrontation against her featureless Anbu mask…what's up with kunoichi and masks today?

"Yeah. See you next time they assign you to put up with me." I raised the back of my hand at her as I walked on ahead, hearing her dissipate in a puff of smoke behind me.

As I got closer, I spotted two familiar faces flanking the front door…looks like these guys are on guard duty again today.

"Hey, Minato-sama!" One of them calls out to me as I get closer…kinda wish he didn't add the suffix on there.

"Aha, please don't call me that." I smile a bit painfully. "Just 'Minato' is fine."

I'm a little uncomfortable being called 'Minato-sama'…especially by the older villagers who knew a different 'Minato-sama' that actually deserved to be called that. The only time people give me the 'master' honorific is when they're trying to be polite because I'm one of the Hokage's sons. I didn't really do anything to earn it.

"—Kotetsu-san. Izumo-san." I bow about fifteen degrees when I address them, not quite enough to show my neck, but enough to show a bit of casual respect to the two shinobi in their fifties who had lived through both the Third and Fourth Shinobi World Wars…there's not too many Prewars like them around on active duty anymore, since most of them are either retired or dead these days. I usually try to not put myself up above them when I can.

"Alright, 'Minato' it is." Kotetsu-san shrugged and went along with my request. "How're you doing kiddo?"

"Ah, you know." I sighed with a smile that looked just a little tired, and pointed my nose at the huge building behind them. "Just coming back to my family's giant waste of taxpayer money is all."

"Don't worry about that, Minato." Izumo-san reassured me. "Your father paid for all of this out of his own wallet. If anything, we should be thanking him."

"Yeah, well, I wonder about that…" I looked away with narrowed, suspicious eyes. The only ninja that make big-big money are the Jounin and Anbu who consistently do a lot of A-ranked and S-ranked missions for years—and even then not something on this level of ridiculous. My Dad went straight from Genin to the Sixth Hokage when he was seventeen, and there's no mathematical way he could've paid for all of this with his salary as Kage and Mom's income from running the village hospital…he didn't embezzle money from the village treasury, did he…?

"Mmm?" Kotetsu notices the hardback I have tucked under one of my arms. "What's that you're carrying? Some sort of book?"

"Ah, this?" I hold up the copy of _A Whirlpool of Lightning: Volume 1_ that Shino-chan lent me. It was over a thousand pages long and had this really vivid cover art of a pair of disembodied Sharingan eyes superimposed over a photograph of a whirlpool. "This is just a book one of my friends gave to me. She said it's really good and that it'll change my life, and stuff."

I leave out the fact that I agreed to read it primarily for the mercenary reason of trying to solve her IHaveToRunAwayFromTheVillageOrElseIWontBeCool-ism.

If possible, I'd like to do the typical guy thing and get an abbreviated summary off of someone else instead of putting in the effort to actually read this thing. No point in asking these two, though. Only Postwar teenage girls and a few War-Gen women read it, so a couple of Prewar guys would have no clue what it was about. I'll have to try asking one of the kunoichi at the hospital tomorrow.

"By the way—" I keep talking. "You two haven't seen anyone else from my family come home yet, have you?"

I'm worried about one family member in particular. Specifically, the one with blond hair and green eyes that seems to have the unintentional habit of making the opposite sex draw hearts in their eyes.

"Mm, I haven't heard anything about Naruto-sama coming back yet. Izumo...?" Kotetsu looked to his side.

"Naruto-sama and Sakura-san are still at the Gokage Summit in Amegakure…last word from Ame is that talks are wrapping up, and that they should be back in the village either tomorrow afternoon or the morning after that." He answered.

"Aha—I'm not really worried about Mom and Dad." I rubbed the back of my head. I'll admit that we used to get a little clingy when we were younger, but all three of us Uzumaki Siblings were teenagers now. If anything, the annual trip our parents took out of the village to meet with the other Villages' Heads was a small vacation for us. Mom and Dad—particularly Dad—can be pretty overbearing at times.

I was thinking more about my brother and sister. Specifically, Nii-san.

Shinachiku has an apartment of his own and a network of safehouses scattered across the Five Great Shinobi Countries, but between his duties as Anbu Commander and the times he feels like spending the night at our house, we still end up seeing him more days than not.

…In case you happen to remember my explanation earlier about why us younger shinobi tend to be weaker than the older generations, being that we've never experienced war—I would like to note my older brother is the absolute exception. Uzumaki Shinachiku is a really dangerous man, and don't be fooled by that pretty-faced bad boy persona that he's cultivated ever since the day he hit puberty, either. He's evil. Pure. Evil. The worst. Geh…

"Hanami-sama and Shinachiku-sama came here an hour before you did." Izumo answered. "I think your sister went upstairs and Shinachiku-sama said he had something he needed to do, so it'll probably just be you and your sister here tonight…want us to get the cooks on the second floor to send you something up? It'd be no problem."

"Ah, no thanks, it's cool." I put an open hand, palm facing out, in front of my chest to reject them. "Nami probably just wants ramen again tonight anyway. I should be able to handle that much." I raise that same hand over my shoulder. "See you guys."

It's nice to have the option to have food sent up to you, but it's too easy to fall into the trap of being spoiled if you start to rely on it. I've been cooking for myself ever since I've been tall enough to reach the stovetop. Kind of a necessity. Mom's attempts at food are about as deadly as her poisons are, and Dad has the occasional habit of setting the kitchen on fire.

**More importantly…**

My older brother is adept at traveling at the speed of light (not joking), so them saying he's not here isn't a guarantee that it's true. He could still use his space-time ninjutsu to teleport through an open window and then lay a trap for me on the other side. He might have even made it look like he's not inside on purpose so he can catch me off-guard.

If Nii-san's here today, I'm going to have to be really careful…check every corner, look up at the ceiling each time I pass by an arch that obscures my sight…I won't even be half-safe until I get to my room, and even then…

…I know, I'm being really paranoid right now. I have my reasons.

Last time I got caught by one of Shinachiku's pranks, I was stuck inside a genjutsu that wouldn't release until I did every one of the twelve basic handseals consecutively in under two seconds…and before that I got hit by laughing gas that came out of the wall, and I couldn't stop laughing until I made the antidote that he left me instructions for, and the instructions were in this really small text that I couldn't read because I was tearing up from laughing so hard…and then there was this one time where I stepped on a snare that trapped me in a net with a bag of dulled kunai inside, and I had to find the weak points in the rope to get myself free.

"Ah, Minato-sama, welcome bac—hm?"

I silently shush the receptionist up front by pressing two fingers against my lips. I got on my belly and started crawling towards the staircase to the second floor, honing my sight straight ahead for any traps.

"[What the hell is that kid doing? Is this some sort of new teenage fad?]" The receptionist mutters something else that I can't hear.

My 'defect' prevents me from using most ninjutsu, but I can still use my ninja senses and judgment to keep myself out of danger. In fact, as a medic-nin, I'm obligated to.

The first floor probably doesn't have any traps. There are too many office workers and visitors that come in and out that could have accidentally tripped one. The second floor is more likely.

I slither up the stairs like a silent snake, zoning out all the weird looks from the Jounin and village higher-ups on the second floor that think I'm crazy. I pass by the Jounin-Commander's office, and see Shikamaru-sensei sleeping at his desk inside…Yamanaka-san's really going to get mad at him once he gets home late again tonight.

Eventually I come to the last hallway before the staircase upstairs. Usually only members of our family bother to pass through here, so there was little risk of someone else accidentally triggering any nasty pranks my older brother might have left for me. Additionally, Dad's protective fuuinjutsu on the third floor was too powerful for even Shinachiku to interfere with—it'd take someone a destructive force equivalent to at least five Bijuu Bombs in order to break it, so it's safe to say there wouldn't be any chakra-based traps once I got there.

If I were going to get caught in anything, this was the most likely spot. Let's focus and think here—

It'd be easy to replace part of the floor with a covered plate that would actuate a switch when I stepped on it, and trigger some sort of trapdoor or kunai coming out of the wall or something.

"Ha!" I jumped over to the wall on the left and stood up sideways on it, my feet anchored by the fixed amount of chakra I'm focusing to them. Luckily, my 'defect' didn't affect the old chakra control practices of walking on trees or water, so I could still pull off basic stuff like this.

Staying away from the floor took away the risk of triggering a floor switch. Granted, many underground lairs and other places with ninja-conscious security mitigated this by putting the same kind of switches on the ceilings and walls. But thanks to my knowledge of homebuilding from laboring those lowly D-ranked missions, I might be able to mentally cross off that risk.

—I take out a kunai, and jab the tip into the wall I'm standing on, slicing open a small slit—

Peeling back the drywall just enough for me to see inside, I took out a thin pen-shaped flashlight that I had jammed in one of those summoning scroll pockets that's on our flak jackets, and tried to get a feel for the dimensions inside.

Seems like the interior wall thickness is the typical 11.43 cm, with 5x10 cm steel studs that are the standard 40 cm on center…those things are a pain to bolt stuff onto, the other fresh-out-of-the-academy genin that I worked with during my rookie year always complained about it and why they 'had to do this stupid stuff when we should be out fighting and learning ninjutsu'.

I can't see end-to-end down the wall since the vertical framing and all the mechanicals in between are in the way, and if I try moving every 40 cm and cutting another hole in the wall to check, in the process I might end up triggering Shinachiku's trap that may or may not exist. Plus, I'd probably get yelled at for all the damage I did (as for the one hole I've already made, I can probably tape&mud over it later without anyone noticing).

—I look up at my slightly-oversized forehead (well, technically I look to the right—I'm standing sideways right now), thinking. I'll have to use that boring construction knowledge that the civilian tradesmen try to explain to the teenaged ninja, who usually zone them out while waiting for their low-level laboring mission to be over. Bear with me for a sec, no one else ever likes listening to this boring stuff…

Let's see…11.43 cm of interior wall thickness between here and Shikamaru-sensei's office, 5x10 cm studs and joists, and all the utilities that I can't account for yet…how much space can I estimate there to be in between those? I know there are two bathrooms above me, which means at minimum each of those have a vertical drainpipe with at least 7.6 cm diameter…and there's that large kitchen on this floor that's about the same size as something you'd find in a medium-sized commercial restaurant, so that's going to include all of the regulated 5 cm floor drains and corrosive-resistant piping that the waste piping that's all going coagulate into a bigger vent stack that the drains on our living floors are going to hook up to. Chances are those 7.6 cm minimum drainpipes are actually going to be 10.16 cm so the more complex DWV system below can get some wet venting…that means there won't be any space in the wall to safely route around the piping. The electric conduit going upstairs to the 3rd and 4th floors' primary subpanel—which is right above me—is going to all need to be vertical. Plus, that huge grand bath is on this corner of the house on the 4th floor, it has about 2.5 cubic meters of heated water (seriously, it's really nice, I'll show you it later), the copper on the hot water supply lines running up through here is going to be insulated, but postwar building codes are going to regulate at least 20 cm spacing from the electrical lines as a precaution against electrical fires too…all in all, the maximum amount of space Shinachiku could've found to put a switch or fake part of the wall in would be…

…You didn't honestly read all of that, did you? Don't worry about it, no high-level ninja or anyone that's any exciting pays attention to this kind of thing. But me? I don't have any kind of advanced technique that lets me effortlessly fly past all danger or teleport to the other side—that kind of stuff is for heroes and main characters who need to get going so they can fight the big villain. I have to take my time and use my head instead.

Anyway, important thing is this—there isn't enough space for him to hide a physical trap in the walls without me noticing. Condition #1 for me crossing is clear.

That didn't preclude the possibility, however, of a chakra-based hidden seal that would activate when I passed over it. Nii-san was brilliant at the old Uzumaki Clan's Fuuinjutsu, so it'd be child's play for him to do something like that…he was brilliant at a lot of other things, too. I think the one field he was best at was bullying me.

Luckily, this isn't the first time I've had to go through this procedure. I get my hands together for a couple hand seals.

Modified Ox, Tiger, Annddd…

**Mystic Palm Technique!**

My hands glow green. Normally, I don't need to use hand seals to activate this, but it's best I take the time to meld my chakra and get my output as high as possible in this case. I'm not going to be healing anything, I'm going to use a trick I've learned to trigger any hidden sealing jutsu on the wall I'm standing on.

I place my glowing hands flat against the wall, and using my jutsu as a conduit, I 'stretch' my green chakra from end-to-end across the hallway. Dad once taught me that you can prematurely trigger ninety-percent of all trap-type fuuinjutsu by using some sort of ranged technique that gives off a chakra signature. That way you're nice and out of the way when it activates and tries to ensnare the empty air.

I feel some sweat trickle sideways across my forehead, pulled down to my right by the force of gravity. Using Mystic Palms from a distance takes a lot of chakra to maintain, and severely decreases its effectiveness. I can only manage it right now because I'm using it on an inanimate object. If I were to try to use this technique on a medium-to-long distance target like a living person that needed healing instead, chances are I'd just make us both comatose. Think that'd be the closest thing I had to an offensive ninjutsu in my arsenal.

Only legendary medic-nin like Mom, the Godaime Hokage, or that Kabuto guy from the history books have ever been able to use Shousen Jutsu with any range and still be effective with it. I'm relatively good with medical ninjutsu, but I'm not quite at that level yet.

I repeat my 'Mystic Palms Check' three more times, checking the other walls for fuuinjutsu that might activate if my shadow passes it, or ones that might only activate if they sense my signature twice.

Condition #2 clear.

After confirming that it's clear of hidden seals, I pull out three shuriken from the pouch on my hip, placing each on a finger, and swing my arm forward—

—The three shuriken harmlessly stab the wall on the other side. They didn't snag or cut any invisible tripwire. Good.

I throw three more and then another three after that; checking for vertical, horizontal, and diagonal tripwire. Condition #3, clear. The head of some medium-sized clan in the village came up to me in middle of it, asking me to stop—

"Minato, please stop playing whatever game this is in the hallway. You are making a mess and worrying everyone…"

"You think is a game?! My life's in danger, here!" I shouted, trying to keep my concentration firmly on uncovering hidden threats.

"Oh, I…sorry…" They walked away confused, leaving me to my mission.

…Alright, 'my life' might have been an exaggeration. But my dignity's still at stake. I'll throw it away before I let my older brother take it from me, dammit.

—After confirming this hallway is free of all hidden traps, I proceed forward by walking on the first wall that I checked. I stop when I reach the staircase up to the third floor, and repeat all the same steps from before…it's clear…maybe Shinachiku doesn't have a prank waiting for me at all?

I proceed slowly upstairs, ready for one of his trademark surprises to pop out at any moment.

…This is the moment of truth. If there are any pranks from my older brother waiting for me, they'll be right behind this door at the top, leading to the Uzumaki Family's private residence—

I have no way of seeing what's on the other side, that Mystic Palms trick from earlier only useful for sending out a false chakra signature. Checking the crack underneath, I can see no one's standing nearby at least…maybe if I had Inoi or Shino-chan's abilities, I could use the Shadow Imitation Technique or Kikaichuu to get a sense for what's on the other side…well, no point worrying about that now. I just need to muster the courage to turn the knob, and push forward!

I swing open the door with all my strength—

"**TADAIMA!**" I shout the customary greeting for returning home like it's a warcry, and dive to the ground like I'm dodging an explosion overhead.

I wait for the inevitable, horrible thing that's going to happen…

…and it never happens.

I perk my head up. I'm in the vestibule-esque genkan of the Uzumaki Household. It's the entryway with the wooden landing where you're supposed to take off your shoes. I'm completely fine.

"Haaa…"

I'm way too paranoid…all the years of my older brother's lighthearted bullying has really taken its toll on me.

I slip my sandals off. I don't see anyone else's shoes, so I'm probably safe for the day. I unzip my green flak jacket and take it off along with my forehead protector, while keeping on the Leaf Uniform's blue pants and the long-sleeved blue undershirt with red swirls at the shoulders. I pick up Shino-chan's book while I'm at it. I should probably get to work on putting a dent in the first chapter soon.

I walk up to the next door, the sliding one that leads into the Uzumaki Household proper.

I open it.

**And I trigger the shinobi's trap on the other side.**

I hear something from above fall straight towards my head, and see its shadow out of the corner of my eyes—

Oh…oh no…

I was being conceited. Why would I think I'm safe just because I made it past the hardest part?!

It doesn't matter now. I have failed my duty as a ninja to see underneath the underneath. Now all I can do is accept whatever punishment that is heading right for me.

I brace for impact, and feel something soft hit the top of my head—


	7. Uzumaki Siblings II

—Wait, soft?

The 'trap' that was waiting for me on the other side bounces off my head and harmlessly hits the floor. It leaves behind some powdery residue in my scalp.

I touch the top of my dyed-blond hair and look at my hand…this is…chalk?

All of the tensed muscles in my forehead loosened. I look at the small gray thing on the ground and pick it up…it's…

…A chalkboard eraser? What the hell? This isn't the academy, where did someone even get a chalkboard eraser…?

Wait a sec, this can't be Nii-san's handiwork. Uzumaki Shinachiku is a true challenge-the-world rebellious type, the kind that likes nothing more than to prove someone wrong. His pranks and jokes were always elaborate schemes that caused public outcry or tested the victim's skills as a shinobi. He wouldn't do something as stupid as this. The old 'chalkboard eraser above the sliding door' trick falls firmly in the harmless mischief category, which means…

"Aha—hahahaha…"

I hear a laugh from someone who has no concept of an inside voice nearby. I look to the source, sitting on the staircase of the foyer, and I see…

The top of the Hokage's hat, staring right at me. Only, it's not the Hokage who's wearing it.

Sticking out underneath it, I see a pair of legs and feet with their sandals still on. Keh, punk, what do you think you're doing, not taking your shoes off at the door…

I step towards them. I hear their snickering multiply with each one I take.

When I reach eye level with them on the stairs, they throw the Hokage headpiece that they're hiding behind in the air, and reveal what I already knew—

A girl that always wore orange-and-blue, tomato-red hair that reached down all the way to the back of her knees, and blue eyes that were just a little steelier than mine.

Her Konohagakure forehead protector was affixed right where it was supposed to be, not slanted nor worn anywhere else but straight across the forehead. It was the same way that all fresh-out-of-the-academy genin unstylishly wore their first headband, before they grew into it and got a little less proud of the fact.

Dad's mentioned before that she takes after our grandma on his side of the family…Kushina, I think that was her name. A lot of the elderly villagers like to remark that her red hair is beautiful and that it reminds them of her.

"**JAAN-JAAN!**" My thirteen-year-old little sister throws her arms above her head, all 150 cm of her amped up with pure energy. "The culprit was none other than me, **Uzumaki Hanami!**"

She doesn't use the more neutral/passive 'watashi'/'atashi' like most girls do, even when she's speaking to a superior or elder. She only uses the rougher 'ore' and 'oresama' to refer to herself. Just like Shinachiku and Dad do.

I sigh, and pat her on top of the head, ruffling around that lively red hair of hers that seems to have a spirit of its own.

"I let my guard down. It's my defeat." I smiled. "Good job, Nami."

"Eheheheh…" Nami, her eyes closed and her pumped-up fists up to her mouth, happily snickered to herself, proud.

It'd probably be more normal for someone to be mad about something like this, but I'm just happy it's not Shinachiku who caught me this time. Shinachiku's the true master of danger and terrorizing the innocent. Nami's just the harmless apprentice that follows him around like an imprinted duckling. Usually her pranks are really obvious and lack any subtlety to them, so it's pretty uncommon for me to fall for one like this—something I'm kinda embarrassed about right now, by the way. I fell for my little sister's childish trap, even after taking all the precautions that I've learned in the years of pitting myself against my much more talented older brother. I guess that's just a sign that I need to be more alert and try harder next time.

I'm occasionally on the receiving end of my brother and sister's chaos, but I'm mature enough to know I shouldn't be causing it. It's just stupid, I'd never stoop to down to doing all the irresponsible stuff they do…

…Well, I guess there was that one time at Hokage Rock that I mentioned earlier…and I was doing some mean things to Shino-chan when I woke her up a little bit ago, too…

…Alright, maybe I'm not perfect either. I try to be the most levelheaded and responsible one out of the three of us, though, honest.

—The Hokage's ceremonial headwear that she threw up in the air falls down slowly, swaying side-to-side like a loose paper off the top of a school building on a still-winded day. It lands lopsidedly on my head, crowning me the Nanadaime in some sort of bizarre coronation ceremony.

Nami sees this, and her snickering exploded into full-bursting laughter, falling over on her side and digging into the clothes over her belly with her roughened fingers. She's wearing an orange hoodie with a black whirlpool stitched over her stomach—the symbol of the long-lost Uzumaki Clan that we're descended from.

Going back to what's on top of my head, though…what do you call this thing, anyway? You know, that thing the Hokage wears on his head with the white veil and the red-and-white flap on top with the character for 'fire' on it.

'Hokage Hat'? Kinda feels disingenuous to call it a 'hat'. That sounds like any regular thing you could put on your head, pretty anti-cultural.

'Hokage Veil'? Well, there's a veil on it, but there's also that rectangular thing on top. This one should work most of the time, but what if I wanted to describe the veil part specifically and not the hat thing as a whole? I'd have no way of distinguishing the two.

'Hokage Headpiece'? 'Hokage Headwear'? Those sound too general. This thing looks kind of distinct. Like it feels like it should have some sort of name or resemblance to something else that I can appropriate the right word from.

If I were a writer right now, I'd really be stressing out over what to call this thing. Well, whatever, the ceremonial thing that the Hokage wears on their head whenever they're in the traditional robes. The one that Dad barely ever wears. That thing. It's on my head right now, and it's a little big for me…think I'm still at least a couple growth spurts away from it fitting.

I take it off and flip the '火' character towards me, gliding my hand across the top to dust off some of the dirt she's gotten on it.

"Where'd you get this thing, anyway?" I ask. "Isn't Dad still at the Gokage Summit in Ame? He didn't come home early, did he?"

"No~pe." Nami smiled from ear to ear, teeth gleaming. It was a pretty familiar sight. "I stole it from his bag last week, morning before he left. I've been saving it ever since."

I can kind of imagine our Dad showing up to the roundtable where the other four Kage are already sitting down, headwear all neatly laid out with their respective elemental kanji pointing perfectly towards the middle, while he just kind of stands there rubbing the back of his head—half-sorry and half-grinning while he explains that he left his hat at home.

Well, a minor diplomatic gaffe probably isn't that bad. It's nothing compared to that one year he went in his Sexy no Jutsu form and tried to get everyone to go along with it…a mental image which I am not going to ink in the colors of.

"—**O-Kae-Ri!** Mina-nii!" Nami suddenly glomps me below the neck, wrapping her arms around where the waist meets the chest. She squeezes air out of my lungs.

Some of that squid-like hair presses up against my chest and wraps around me, warmth trapped between its thicknesses.

I felt some red lines draw themselves diagonally across my face…it's…it's not like I'm glad my annoying little sister is hugging me, or anything…

"Nng…yeah, Tadaima, Nami." I wrap one arm around the back of her shoulders, in that sort of way shy and/or lazy guys half-hug back their mothers and girlfriends when they're in public and afraid of looking uncool.

Usually, the whole 'tadaima—okaerinasai' procedure is supposed to happen first thing you walk in the door, with the welcomee saying tadaima first and the welcomer then saying okaeri. Guess we messed up the order a little.

And usually thirteen-year-old girls aren't this innocent and clingy with their older brothers. My inner voice might sound too much like an old man sometimes, but it wasn't too long ago that I was thirteen myself and sitting in a classroom full of them. Usually by that time they've evolved (or at least begun the process of evolving) into the rolling eyes sort, laced with intermittent sarcastic bitchiness. This is usually accompanied with—or perhaps even caused by—an infection of sudden infatuation towards the cool kid in their class that they can't stop talking/thinking about. Guess Nami's still pretty pure in that regard.

—Mid-hug, I peer over her, suspicious. Shinachiku's not nefariously watching all of this from some concealed corner, is he…?

"Hey, Nami. Say, is, uh—" I look really shiftily to my left and right, darting my eyes around our house. "—is Nii-san coming back anytime soon?"

"Onii-chan said he had to meet up with Asu-chan and Nako-nee, or something. He said he'd be out all night."

'Asu-chan' and 'Nako-nee' meant 'Nara Asuma' (Inoi's older—and full-blooded—brother) and 'Tsunako' (Anbu girl from earlier) respectively.

And 'Onii-chan' meant Shinachiku. I'd like point out the difference here between the childish 'Mina-nii' that I got and the more classical 'Onii-chan' that Shinachiku got. I was kind of the silver medal on Nami's list of favorite older brothers.

"Mmm. They're probably out partying then. Or training. Or both." I say, feeling a bit of relief…it's not that I hate my older brother or anything like that. It's just…complicated. We're complete opposites, and it can be a little hard for us to see eye-to-eye a lot of times.

"Eh, forget him." I go on. "You hungry? Want me to make something?"

"Ramen!" She says, skipping over the 'yes' and 'please' parts. We'd been through this a lot.

"What, again…? Well at least I'm getting pretty good at making it…just add a 'please' on there for me. No one likes a spoiled rich kid with no manners, you hear?"

She usually gets away with it because she gives off such a strong little sister/daughter/granddaughter vibe to everyone older than her, but it'd be a serious problem if she grew up and thought she was entitled to everything as a grown woman just cause.

"Please make me ramen, and you'll be the best brother ever!" She smiles and hits me with her little sister beam.

"Well, if you put it that way…" I smirk and look away and up—putting a dainty finger to my forehead like I'm one of those skinny-armed manga characters that wears glasses and looks like a complete nerd, but is super-arrogant anyway.

"To the kitchen!" I snap my face back towards her and yell. "Let's go! Dattebaro!"

"Dattebana!" She shouts back.

—We advance on, running up the stairs towards victory…

…Then we turn around and run back down them a few seconds later. The family kitchen is on the third floor, not the fourth. Third floor. We knew that. We definitely didn't forget—


	8. Uzumaki Siblings III

—You know, my whole 'Nami is clingy because she's unusually innocent for thirteen' theory might actually be overthinking things. In my case she might just be acting this way for the free food. That's a pretty universal draw regardless of who you are.

Well, doesn't bother me any. It lets me show off my burgeoning cooking skills. One of the few things no one else in our family can beat me in.

When it comes to the Postwar children of the Konoha 11 shinobi, I think every one of us—myself included—has some sort of trait or irony in our personality that sets us apart from our more famous parents. After all, kids very rarely grow up to be just like their parents or how everyone expects them to. There are other factors involved; like differences in living standards, the culture of the changing times they get brought up in, what kind of friends they hang out with, recessive genes…

Uzumaki Hanami, however, is the exception. She is 100% a carbon-copy of our Dad. She is every bit as cheerful, annoying, mischievous, loud, motivating, stupid, and unpredictable as he is. Her innate chakra affinity is even Wind nature.

…Oh yeah, and she wants to be the next Hokage, too.

I kinda feel bad for Mom. Hanami's the only other girl in the family, and she didn't inherit a thing from her besides the meaning behind her name. Think I might have used up all of Mom's genes by the time she was having Kid #3 here.

—We arrive in the family kitchen. It's a lot cozier than the big kitchen downstairs that's used for state functions.

Walking over to a granite countertop; I set down the Hokage headpiece, the froggy wallet that Nami got me for my birthday to match with hers, and the book Aburame Shinoko lent me earlier today.

While I started rummaging around in the pantry and fridge, I heard Nami pick up the copy of _A Whirlpool of Lightning_ that I set down.

"Hey, what's up with this?" Nami asks about the hardback that she just picked up without asking. "One of those books that Shino-chan reads all the time?"

My sister and Shino-chan were about the same size and similar types of screwy and immature, so they got along pretty well despite being two years apart.

"Huh? Yeah, it is. She asked me to read it and tell her what I thought about it tomorrow. You don't know anything about it, do you?"

I guess Nami technically counts as a teenage girl…she might be able to tell me something that could come in handy. Like I said before, I'd like to do the typical guy thing and cheat my notes off of someone else so I can pretend to care instead of actually putting forth the effort.

"Eheheh, I don't read weird books like that." She grins to herself mischievously.

…I don't think you read much at all.

Was worth a try anyway. I'll just stick with my original plan of mooching some bullet points off one of the kunoichi in the hospital.

—I wipe down the counter and lay some of the ingredients out. Think I'll do a simple shouyu ramen. Not exactly the best display of culinary skill, but there's something to be said about mastering the basics.

After washing my hands, I start prepping some of the non-refrigerables. Scallions need to be bisected and then washed pretty thoroughly before you slice them up, a lot of dust and dirt can gather in between the layers, and that dash of green onion that's supposed to go on top will ruin the broth if it still has any dirt on it. Dried kombu, on the other hand, is best to just lightly wipe down with a cloth. The white powdery stuff on the surface of it is good for you and helps contribute to the taste.

—It's right when I start filling a stainless steel pot with cold water that Nami patters up to me, her stomach grumbling.

"Mina-niiiiiii." She says, her eyes bolded black lines that slanted up towards the space between her eyebrows. "Is it ready yet? I wanna eat already."

"It's been like five minutes." I smiled slightly and shoo'd her away. "Go spin some kunai around or something."

After taking care of that minor nuisance, I made some incisions on the edge of the kombu and set it at the bottom of my pot, setting the heat on the gas stove high enough for the water inside to come to a boil. I love that feeling when you're leaning over a pot of water that's starting to boil, and then the steam hits you and opens up your nose. A lot of people draw their face back or stand tall around boiling water because they have an inbuilt fear of scalding their face, but I do the opposite.

Mom says it might be because my chakra affinity is water. I can't really use Water Release or any of the other Elemental Ninjutsu these days because of my 'defect', but goddamn do I love cooking. It's like a form of meditation.

—I take the kombu out of the water right when the first bubbles start to float to the surface, right when a bit of that transparent dark green's bled into it. I'll go ahead and let the water come to a full boil, then take it off and let it simmer down before I mix in the bonito flakes and chicken stock. The fish flavor doesn't get absorbed correctly if you don't take your time.

"Mina-niiiiiiiii." Nami patters up and starts nagging me again. She looks really tired, like the lack of urgency in my role of amateur ramen cook is making her magically lose all of that boundless energy of hers.

…Think she's gonna keep doing this unless I find a way to keep her occupied.

"You seem kinda bored. Wanna play a game with me while we wait?" I ask.

"Yeah!" She shouts in the affirmative, jumping up and suddenly regaining that spirit of hers.

I evil-smile like mom does when she lures us into doing our chores. "Then it sounds like you have enough energy to help me out. Here, wash your hands and grab a knife."

Nami recoils. "You'd risk letting your precious little sister handle something sharp and scary that she could cut her finger off with?!" She acts scared, trying to get out of her share of the work.

"That's a pretty lame excuse when I've seen you throw plenty of kunai blindfolded and mid-backflip while training with Nii-san." I grinned and called her bluff. "Don't worry, I'll give you something easy. Cut the stems off these mushrooms for me. When you're finished you can dice up the extra green onion that we're going to pile on top."

I pull out a brown paper bag of day-old shiitake mushrooms from the fridge. I rub my fingers across the tops, feeling the mushroom heads for firmness. The trick to telling if a shiitake is good or not is to feel for how spongy it is. Too much moisture and it needs to be thrown out. You can also eyeball it by flipping them over and checking how exposed the gills are underneath the caps. The tighter seal around the stem, the better they are for cooking.

I put a select few on the countertop and demonstrate by using a santoku knife to cut the first one—

"Here, like this." When cutting stuff up I usually like to keep finger on the blade itself for added precision, but for her sake I'll use a full five finger grip around the handle so she doesn't try to copy me and end up cutting herself when she inevitably puts too much strength into it. "Put the caps on a plate, bag up the stems and put them in the freezer."

"Eh? What are we doing with the stems, can't we just throw them away?" Nami asks.

"Shiitake stems are highly fibrous and make for a good supplementary ingredient in broths. I'll throw them in next time we're making a real broth and not just twenty minute shouyu ramen."

"But…we're not going to have tonkotsu ramen?" She attacked me with her little sister beam again.

"My tonkotsu broth takes eight hours at bare minimum to make, preferably a whole day so it can soak up all of the flavor out of the bones." I deflected her invisible beam and smiled. "You wanna wait 'til tomorrow night to eat?"

The bottom of Nami's eyes watered. "Wa…shouyu ramen is fine."

…She really is childish for her age. Well, so is Dad, and he's forty-something. Guess it's not that weird.

As far as the ramen goes, I can't miraculously make tonkotsu broth in under an hour, but I can make a decent bowl that's better than your average bachelor's gut-wrecking instant noodles. I won't go as far as handmaking noodle dough or boiling any bones, but I'm making the dashi from scratch and I'm adding in a bit more than the lazy menma+onion+egg+nori combo. In fact, I'll skip the menma and do my signature scallion double-up instead.

"Hey, Mina-nii?" Nami speaks up while cutting up some green onion for me.

"Yeah?" I responded while prepping three more spots on the stovetop. One tall pan for soft boiling eggs, and then one saucepan for cooking up my oil—ginger+scallion with a dash of animal lard (healthier and better tasting than vegetable oil in my opinion, as long as it's not overused). And one tall pot that I'm going to thaw my frozen-fresh noodles out in towards the end.

"Do we have to put the shouyu in shouyu ramen? Isn't it bad for you?" Nami asks me something ridiculous.

"…Uh, yeah. We do." I glare at her for a sec and then round my eyes back to normal. "It's literally in the name. Who said that it's bad for you?"

"Jouji says that soy makes guys weaker and look girly and grow tits."

…Not sure if she'd be brave enough to repeat the 'grow tits' part if Mom weren't in another village right now…eh, she's old enough to find her own voice as far as I'm concerned, I'm not going to bust her over it.

"I wouldn't take anything that musclehead says to heart if I were you." I mix up the tare that we're having a discussion about. Six tablespoons of dark soy sauce, two teaspoons of fine-grained salt, three drops of sweet rice wine, and a liberal pinch of brown sugar (white or sugarless also works, but brown sugar's king for tangy flavors). "'Sides, what's wrong if you end up looking a little more girly? Everyone always says you act more like a boy than I do."

Case in point, I was the one making dinner right now while she was the one complaining about it taking too long, all while I countered her with smiles and snarky passive aggression. I'm an apron and a gender away from being a housewife.

"But what if it makes my body weaker and I stop making as much chakra?! I don't wanna become a bad ninja just because I ate some stupid soy sauce!" She squeezes her thumbs into her fists and waves her arms in the air pretty crazy-like.

I don't think a little bit of something that millions of people eat everyday would have the kind of long term effect that she's imagining, but I can respect the effort to make dietary improvements by worrying about the small details. Too many people commit to changing their eating habits and then never accomplish anything thanks to their tendency to give themselves generous exceptions and handwaving away the small pieces that make up the big picture. Think I'll give an at least semi-responsible answer instead of just outright dismissing her.

"Hm, fair enough." I take the onion-garlic-lard combo off the saucepan to strain, and throw on some pre-braised pork belly slices that I had in the fridge. "Well, in Akimichi Jouji's defense, there is evidence that consumption of soy products often has xenoestrogenic properties."

I garnish the chashu that I'm reheating with a red seasoning, and open up that textbook I have jammed inside my head. As part of my work at the Hospital and of my training; I've done a number of peer reviews and editing passes for Mom's research papers in the medical field. One of the ones she published recently was about nutritional effects on the endocrine system, I think I might be able to pull some knowledge from there—

"Soybeans contain a high concentration of isoflavones, a category of phytoestrogens that closely resemble human estrogen. The studies aren't conclusive, but there have been cases of women that drink large quantities soymilk who report irregularities in their menstru—"

I bite my tongue. I'm pretty matter-of-factly about all stuff physiological thanks to my line of work, but probably not normal to bring that up when we're about to eat.

"—Sorry. 'Monthly habits'. There's less evidence on what it does to men and for both genders in terms of muscular health and overall physical fitness, but assuming isoflavones mimic estrogen elsewhere, it would be a severe effector in terms of the metabolism and binding of bioavailable testosterone—leading to symptoms of muscular atrophy, irregular sleep, low sex drive, general fatigue…also, the phytic acid present in soybeans prevents the absorption of minerals like Iron, Magnesium, Zinc; all of which are also critical for hormonal health. There's also potential effects on the thyroid from particular glycoproteins, and Monosodium Glutamate that…hm?"

I take a break from my monologue when I notice Nami's being unusually quiet. When I glance over to my side; I see that she's collapsed flat to the ground, frothy saliva leaking out the corner of her mouth, her brain short-circuiting.

"…**EH?!** Ha-Hanami?!" My eyes became a pair of filled-in white circles.

"M-Mina-nii…please, stop…" Nami whimpers pathetically, an unfortunate victim of having been bored to death. "I can't take anymore, my head, it hurrrrrrrrttts…ahhhhhh, I can see the light..."

"Don't die on me, Nami!" I shout, my instincts suddenly kicking in. "I'll die too if Mom finds out I killed my sister! Resurrection, resurrection, **Shousen Jutsu!**"

I pushed glowing green hands against Nami's limp body, trying to nudge her back to life.

She smiles sadly like she's slowly fading away and about to become nothing more than a memory whose face gets transparently superimposed in the sky. "Bye, Mina-nii, I love you…tell Mom and Dad I love them too…almost as much as I love Aunt Ayame and her Ichiraku house special of handpulled ramen with miso broth and extra chashu…ah, Ramen-chan…"

"There's ramen right here, dammit!" I keep trying to shake her back to life. "And at least two-thirds of it is gonna go bad and get thrown out if you're not here to eat it!"

"Ah!" Nami's upper half shoots up, that red cloak of hair coming alive and stretching out in in every direction like rays of the sun. "That's blasphemy! I don't want to leave behind such a cold world where bad stuff like that can happen! I can't let it end here, I have to come back—!" She sits up, reviving herself with sheer willpower.

…Maybe the Mystic Palms on my part wasn't really necessary, there…

—I grab Nami's hand and help her up once we're finished playing around. She says something to me on the way up:

"Really, though, Mina-nii—you're really amazing. You're smart and can say all this complicated stuff right off the top of your head."

"Eh—" I shrugged my shoulders, "not really. People like Mom who write all this stuff down that the rank-and-file guys like me have to read. Or people like Shikamaru-sensei who can figure stuff out without even trying. Those are the smart ones. I just pay too much attention to boring stuff that exciting people don't have the time to memorize—"

Anyone can memorize something in a book if they have enough free time. I'm knowledgeable precisely because I'm boring. There's no way I'd ever be a main character of a story. That's for people like Dad who actually do things instead of just talking to themselves inside their head about them.

Who would read something like this? No ninja fights, just cooking, people talking to each other, and long-winded nerd essays about nothing happening. Weird people, that's who. Anyone normal would've either stopped reading a while ago or skipped past all of this so they can get to the cool parts.

"—besides, you forgetting I'm a medic-nin?" I remind her of the obvious. "Concern for people's health and what they eat goes hand-in-hand. I don't see why it'd be unusual for me to have a strong opinion about what people put in their bodies."

As healers, waiting for people to get hurt and patching them up after the fact is definitely what we're most known for, but it pays to be proactive too. In peacetime, the Konohagakure Hospital tends to bustle more with scheduled checkups than pressing emergencies. You need the mindset to be able to deal with both, if you're ever going to be any good at modern-day medical ninjutsu.

"…But, um, Mina-nii—I still don't get it. Is soy stuff good for you or bad for you?"

Nami must really care about getting stronger for her to be bringing this up again. Normally her short-term memory only lasts long enough for the butterfly to start flying in front of her eyes.

I guess the vast majority of the population really wouldn't care about all of this nutritional stuff I've talked about and the science behind it. And biochemistry is an emerging field in the Postwar Shinobi World, all of my ramblings here are really more my personal opinion than medical fact.

Mom's told me before that you can never oversimplify things enough for patients, and that you should wait until they have specific questions before going into details. Otherwise, you risk hitting them with an information overload and preventing them from digesting any of the information at all. Nami's healthier than I am and not a patient in any way, but the same process should apply here.

"Well," I continue on from that long-winded lesson from earlier. "Point I was trying to get to is that soy products can be dangerous to your physical fitness, but it also depends on what kind of product. Many of the staples in our diets, like natto and miso paste, are made with a fermentation process that removes most of the harmful anti-nutrients. In the case of soy sauce, it really depends on the manufacturing process. Traditionally, everyone in the Shinobi World ate fermented soy sauce that took months to make, but a lot of it today is produced industrially by acid washing to cut costs. You know, the cheapest stuff in grocery stores, the kind in those little plastic bottles with no labels?"

"Oh, I've seen those before!" Nami bounces in place a little like there are springs in her feet, finally understanding something I've said. "That's that stuff that tastes super salty. I don't really like it."

Think tying it back to foods that she can see with her eyes helped make it more relatable.

"Mhm. Doesn't have the same aroma." I mix some fresh-frozen noodles into a tall pot of boiling water. "Also, the factories' aluminum vats add the risk of heavy metals getting mixed in during the production. It's better for you and better-tasting to just buy the fermented kind. That's the kind that our ancestors have been eating for over a thousand years."

I'm pretty sure all six of the Hokage consistently ate meals that were cooked with the classic combination of dashi-mirin-shouyu, and I don't think any of them got to the top by having a weak punch…

…Granted, I don't know how much your health and diet can really matter, once you're a demigod that throws around giant energy blasts that determine the fate of the world and do severe ecological damage to our forests. But for those of us who are still actual ninja and not just overpowered freaks of nature, the simple rules of paying attention to your health and watching out for others' still applies.

"In short—you're fine." I go on. "Soy sauce only has a fiftieth of a milligram of phytoestrogen per tablespoon. If you're really worried about soy screwing you up, just avoid soy milk and tofu. And if you wanna be extra safe, stay away from stuff with soybean oil while you're at it. Its omega-6 to omega-3 ratio can cause some joint pain and inflammation throughout the body."

Of course, this is really just all extrapolation based off of my own personal diet and finite medical knowledge. Everyone's body is different, and I can't just make a blanket statement about all of them. A vegetarian or someone elsewise on a plant-based diet might eat something like tofu and find that the potential effects to their hormones are offset by the benefits of having an abundant source of protein with a complete amino acid profile. Additionally, I wouldn't say limited amounts of unfermented soy is any worse than, say, an occasional candy bar.

There are no medical professionals out there that are going to advocate an absolute best lifestyle, or one single change in your diet that will change everything (at least, not any with their heads screwed on correctly). Certain medical conditions like diabetes and heart disease might call for a sterner hand; but for the most part we just give answers and advice based off the patient's own questions and preconceptions, and try to guide them into making their own decisions based off of what they already know. Might not necessarily lead to everyone eating the 'optimal diet'—whatever that is—but if we can put to rest some of the stress someone might be getting over choosing the right thing every time, and get them to be just a little bit more self-involved in making healthier choices in their life—then chances are they're probably going to end up feeling better than they did before.

—The noodles finish boiling. Time to put it all together.

Two bowls—tare and grilled scallion on the bottom, then pour just enough broth so there's that firmer mesh of noodles up top to contrast with the softer underside. It's a personal preference for me.

The noodles go straight from the boiling water into each bowl. Doesn't matter too much if you set them off to the side before adding them into the soup, but I think they're more pliable and really soak in the flavor better this way.

Toppings time. This is really where you really earn your points in decoration and aesthetics.

Shiitake first so they can soften up a little.

Two floating egg halves with the jellied yolk pointing up (an extra egg for Nami's bowl).

Two sidelong pieces of nori—seaweed sheet—nestled right next to the eggs for color contrast.

Five slices of Chashu tightly stacked—the red-seasoned sides pointing up. The salty side needs to stay intact so you can bite into it and then wash it down with the warm contrast of the soup.

Finally, the green onion. I already put grilled scallion in the broth, but any good bowl of ramen needs that mound of uncooked scallion on top of the soup and noodles. There's really two ways to go about this. Either you can do it binary style and put a mound of green onion slices in the soup next to the mass of noodles, or you can put it on top of the noodles 'the snow on top of the mountain' style. You could also just sprinkle it anywhere if you're the uncreative type. For me, it's like putting a pickle on the edge of a hamburger instead of dead-center. You need some imagination, you know, some surprise.

—I skim a bit of the broth and give it a chef's taste. The first impression on the tongue is tangy and spicy, but thanks to the scallion oil, the spiciness gets tempered as soon as the broth spreads through the mouth, leaving a richer aftertaste and more of a tingle than a sting on the gums and tongue. Ramen chefs around the world debate usefulness of oil in ramen and whether or not it's cheating. Purists like to say that extra oil masks the originality in each ramen chef's broth and doesn't let the other flavors stand out on their own. Me? I have a simple saying—if you're afraid of fats, you're afraid of good food.

If you want an even more controversial opinion that would make any professional ramen chef hate me, though, try this—I always double up or even triple up on onions. You can never have enough onions. Sometimes I'll even caramelize some yellow onion and mix it in with the broth. Heresy, I know. Occasionally, I get someone who doesn't like onion and asks if I can make it without. Naturally, I respect their wishes because I am a considerate little butterfly and I would never do anything to offend someone or upset their tastes. Just kidding. I just keep cooking for them and slowly ramp up the onion content in their food so they gradually build up a tolerance, all while Talk no Jutsu-ing about why onions are so great and how they're good for you, until eventually their onion tolerance flips into outright onion love and I've successfully brainwashed them to accept my beliefs—forever shackling them to my supreme evil will. Mwahahaha…

…Shit, I might be hanging around that crazy bug girl a little too much.

Well, point is I love cooking. Granted, I'm nowhere near as good as the good folk at Ichiraku are at making ramen, and even then this is just me using a bunch of store-bought ingredients. I didn't give myself time to marinate the eggs, or make a true broth, or make fresh noodle dough and stretch it out into noodles—but even as a busy person you can still make something that's about 70% as good using packaged ingredients and shortcuts. It's not an excuse to eat terribly just because you can't eat perfectly.

"—Itadakimasu!" Nami claps her hands together when I set both bowls down at the table.

"Yeah, yeah, itadaku—" I murmur, twirling some noodles around in my chopsticks. The soup drips from the noodles like the drops from icicles at sunrise, that homely brown broth beguiling just the slightest hint of sweetness—

I take a bite. Mmmph. I love it when I'm amazing.

—Nami finishes her first bowl in short fashion and goes back for seconds, a quizzical look on her face when she comes back to the table, having been in too much of a hungered craze to notice what she's noticed now. She speaks up about it—

"Where's the naruto?" She asks. I don't think she's the only one asking that question.

"…Uh, Dad's in Amegakure. For the next day or two, remember?"

"Not Dad, the white fishy stuff with the pink swirls. That naruto!"

"Oh, narutomaki." I clarify for her. By 'naruto', she means narutomaki, the white fishcake with the pink swirls in the middle. It's not uncommon at all to put naruto on shouyu ramen, but personally I think it goes better with miso or pork based broths. "I got some from the grocery store yesterday. Second shelf down in the fridge, go cut some up for yourself."

"'Kay."

She does just that. Except, she runs into the smallest problem possible—

"Um, Mina-nii, where's the knife?"

"I threw it in the sink. Think all my spares are in there too." I pointed at the sink with my chin. There was a stack of dirty dishes protruding out the top, a monument to our temporary freedom from our parents. "Just grab a knife out of there and clean it off. Should be good."

Nami looks up for a second when I tell her that, and then looks at me so she can ask me something really stupid—

"Can you clean it for me?"

"You serious?" I stop sucking up the noodles into my mouth mid-slurp, my brain having permanently lost some of its function via diffusion of my sister's sheer stupidity. I have to talk back to her out of the side of my mouth while ramen noodles dangle loosely against my chin. "You put the soap on the metal part. Run water over it. Done. Five, maybe ten seconds. Easiest thing in the world."

"But then I'd be grabbing something out of the sink, which means my hands would be dirty, which means I'd have to wash my hands too, which means it would take even longer for me to eat my—" Nami says a bunch of things in the time it would take her to just do it.

"Literally the simplest two tasks in the world." I turn in my seat to face away from her and contently slurp up my noodles. "You gonna tell me you need me to breathe for you too? I thought you were supposed to be Konoha's #1 hyperactive ninja. Do some activity."

Who the hell asks something like that? 'Oh, can you get up and do this simplest most trivial task for me because I don't wanna put in the extra effort?' The kind of people who are way too comfortable being themselves around you and not afraid at all of looking selfish—siblings, that's who.

—Our ramen-addicted heroine is currently stirring around in place right now, trying to think of a way to get around doing the easiest thing in the world. It's taking her about five times as much time as it would to just grab a knife from the sink and deal with the thirty second inconvenience.

I'm pretending not to care right now, but I'm still watching her out of the corner of my eye.

—A light bulb goes off over her head like she's got some genius idea. She unzips the pouch with all of her ninja tools inside, and then turns it upside down over the counter. My ears are filled with the clangs of a bunch of kunai and shuriken hitting the granite.

That's the wrong activity.

I sigh, and get up. I have a serious amount of work to do before I can release this one into the wild as a functioning member of society. Not quite as much work as I have before I can release our dear Shino-chan, but that one's probably a lost cause anyway.

"Hey, don't do that, I just wiped down the counter…"

"But Mina-nii, I can skip all of this if I—"

"Yeah, I know what you're trying to do. All of your ninja tools are really dirty because you overuse them on target practice and never wash them. See—?" I picked up one of her kunai, covered in caked-out mud. How the hell did she even manage this, was she using it to dig…she some sort of weird part-human-part-fox? "These have at least five types of bacteria we haven't discovered yet in our laboratories. You'll seriously get sick if you use one of those to cut up some narutomaki and let them soak in your bowl."

"But I think I still got one that's clean. Where is it, where'd I put it…?" She starts patting herself down, trying to find a kunai that she hid on herself.

I don't get why she's so randomly stubborn about the stupidest things. Must be some more of Dad pouring out from her genes.

"Ah, here it is!" She pulls out the kunai she's looking for. It's…

…Oh…that kunai.

**Lub-Dub. Lub-Dub. Lub-Dub.**

Oh, sorry. That was the sound of my heart beating. I'm in danger.

The particular ninja tool she just pulled out isn't any regular kunai. It's one of the ones that the Fourth Hokage famously used, the ones with the three pronged blades and the tag wrapped around the handle that lets users of Hiraishin no Jutsu teleport instantly to your location. Dad gave each of us one so he could teleport to us at any time.

**Lub-Dub. Lub-Dub. Lub-Lub-Dub.**

That third heartbeat had a bit of a stutter. Happens all the time.

"Alright!" Nami lines up the middle blade of the kunai with the tube of fish cake, and is just about the cut into it when—

"WAIT, NONONONONONONONONONONO." I snap out of my internal narration of the events unfolding in front of me, my fight-or-flight instinct kicking out all the smartassery out of my head and replacing it with the frantic desire for survival. "Nami—whatever you do, don't use that kunai! I might die if you do!"

"Eh?" Nami looks at me puzzled, seriously not understanding the logical order of events that's going to happen if she uses a Hiraishin kunai right here and now.

The way this particular type of kunai work is by alerting the closest Hiraishin-user with a matching seal whenever they get used. There are two users of the Flying Thunder God Technique alive right now, and Dad is in Amegakure. That would mean the closest user would be—

"You'll summon Shinachiku!"

"Shinachiku…?" Nami looks up at the ceiling like I just said a foreign word. "Oh, you mean like menma?! I like those on ramen too!"

"I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE RAMEN TOPPING YOU IDI—"

Nami cuts me off as she slices into it, the handle of the three-pronged kunai glowing as its seal is activated—

**And in that instant—**

**A yellow flash appears.**

There's no gust of wind, nor is there a single piece of overturned furniture or a loose thing fluttering in the air from the momentum, even though he just traveled here at the speed of light—a flawless execution of space-time ninjutsu.

He lands a little bit past where Nami stabbed in the kunai, a palm planted firmly on the counter, all five fingers spread out.

—I felt my legs tremble. This was what I was afraid of—

A black haori waving in the air behind him, with the same pattern as the ones worn by the Hokage—white flames at the hem.

Blond of hair, green of eyes.

They say there's a certain talent that appears in this village only once every generation. Our father and Uchiha Sasuke fulfilled this role in the generation before us. In the generation before them, it was Namikaze Minato—the man I'm named after. Before him it was the Sannin, then the Third Hokage before them, and then the First Hokage and Uchiha Madara at the village's founding.

Working the other way, there was one person that represented that talent for our generation. One single outlier that defied all of the weakening expectations of this generation that has never known anything but peace, the one young shinobi that represented everything we once were—

The strongest shinobi to have been born since the end of Fourth Shinobi World War—

"Yo," Uzumaki Shinachiku said, like he was no big deal. "What's up?"


	9. Uzumaki Siblings IV

He was pretty tall.

A few centimeters north of 180 cm, just a couple shorter than Dad is. For foreigners, that's not that impressive, but here in the Shinobi World we tend to be on the shorter side. Shinachiku towered over most other villagers and instantly stood out in any crowd. For a few more reasons than just his height.

For one, he looked a lot more like Dad than Nami or I did. Hanami looked mostly like our paternal grandmother, I took after Mom more than anyone, but Shinachiku's features came from our father and our father's father.

He had blond hair—the spiky yellow kind—Mom's green eyes, and a face of soft features and sharp expressions. He always kept his face bare, his kitsune mask with red stripes either affixed to his shoulder or somewhere else. Pretty conspicuous considering Anbu are supposed to keep their true identities secret.

He didn't exactly dress like everyone else, either. He wore the standard black pants and sleeveless silver Anbu vest—which tended to catch enough eyes as is in today's pacifist world—but over that was a haori that resembled the Hokage's. It was solid black, save the white-colored flames that marked the trim and the vertical characters on the back—boldface white kanji with sharp angular strokes, spelling out the rank 'Anbu Commander'. He didn't wear his haori so much as he did simply drape it over his own shoulders, as one would an overcoat, letting the sleeves dangle emptily at his sides. When a strong sidelong wind came, it would blow a bit to his side and flutter with a tide of black-and-white ripples.

Apparently, the women in the village found this to be cool. Really, really, really cool.

"—Onii-chan, Onii-chan!" Hanami ran up to our older brother while I was frozen in place. She hugged him around the waist and dug her face into his solar plexus, so much so that it looked like she was smothering herself.

Shianchiku looked down at the lively thing encased in red hair that was currently clinging to him. He patted her on the head—which is to say he dug his fingers into her scalp and messed up her hair with a few rough twists of the arm and wrist, fraying it into split ends. Our sister's a pretty durable little creature, so naturally she only finds this enjoyable.

"Now, now, Nami. We talked about this." Shinachiku bent down to eye level and wagged a finger in front of Nami's face. "You're getting too old to call me 'Onii-chan' anymore. From now on, it's 'Onii-sama', alright? Say it with me—'Onii-sama'."

"Onii-sama, Onii-sama!" Nami cheered him on. That's a pretty serious upgrade in honorific.

Shinachiku placed a hand flat on his chest in gratification. "Yes, I am amazing. Praise me more."

What kind of weird stuff is he putting in her head…? Wait, no, I shouldn't care about that right now. I need to get out of here.

I'll just sneak out of here very ninja-like…that's right, I'm a background character, no one pay any attention to me while I slip out of this scene, just a few more steps and I'll—

"—hey, what's that?" Shinachiku says as I'm halfway out of the kitchen.

I return to my impression of a statue when I hear him notice something. I look out of the corner of my eye and see—

Shinachiku, looking dead at…that Hokage headpiece I set down earlier.

"This the Old Man's hat?" He said, picking it up and whimsically inspecting it in front of his eyes, not looking like he's noticed me at all. "Hey Nami, where'd this come from? Thought Mom and the Old Man were still in Ame."

"I stole it from Dad!" Nami says, Dad-smiling without any shame at all. "Dattebana!"

Shinachiku Dad-smiles right back at her and gives a thumbs up. "Ha, Nice! Dattebaze!"

…Aha, idiots…I'm still safe, alright, let's keep going—

"Wanna try Dad's hat on?" Nami asked. "I tried earlier but all the corners flopped down and it kept falling off."

Well, naturally. The Hokage's ceremonial clothes are custom tailored for them alone, and the headpiece is meant to look big even for the head it's meant to go on. Dad's pretty tall, so it doesn't stay neatly on top of Nami or I that well. Shinachiku's the only one out of the three of us that's close enough in Dad's stature and size for it to fit.

"Psh." He does a quick, amused-and-dismissive smile and pushes a short exhale out of the opening in his smirk, like when someone tries to laugh at an unfunny joke and only manages to get a quarter of the way there. "I'll pass."

Shinachiku tosses the Hokage-head-thing over his shoulder like it's something for the dirty laundry pile.

—I'm right in front of the hallway leading out back towards the stairs, just one more step, just a little bit more and I'll—

—A three-pronged kunai flies right in front of my nose and plants itself in the wall beside me, stopping me dead in my tracks.

…He's so fast that I didn't even see him throw it. It didn't look like his arms or hands moved at all from my eyes. Like just one moment there wasn't a kunai blocking the way, and then in zero seconds there was.

**Hiraishin no Jutsu!**

He teleports right in front of me, close enough that I have to bend my neck back to look up at him. He's leaning down over me, smiling with closed eyes and both of his hands behind his back.

"Hey there, little Minato." Shinachiku says, determinately blocking my escape. "Going somewhere without saying hi to your older brother? And here everyone's saying that you've gotten over that little untalkative phase of yours and caught the social bug."

I jump back a few feet, giving myself enough room for us to have a standoff between ninja. We aren't supposed to use ninja tools inside the house, but one of my hands have reflexively creeped towards the holster with my shuriken, like that deadly moment when two mid-level enemy ninja meet each other and have that silent staredown, each trying to predict where the other will dodge before they each take off and start to throw.

…Shinachiku's arms were folded now. He's probably finding this funny.

"Ah, h-hey, Nii-san." Sweat pours furiously from that forehead of mine, evaporating before it can reach my eyebrows. "Yeah, I'm just going upstairs…really tired today…wanna sleep…yeah…"

There's a deep red sun lighting up my face right now. That's the color of all of my bravery burning itself up.

"Really…?" He put a balled-up fist against his hip, his elbow pushing out against that black-with-white-flames haori and revealing a bit of his arm. Like most ninja he was more slim than he was muscular, but he had one of those scary-looking black-ink kanji tattoos, like the ones Kumo ninja like to get. 'Demon-sage', it spelled, between the shoulder and elbow of his left arm. Think you can guess where he got the inspiration from."…Because judging by how you're masking your chakra right now, it seems like you're trying to sneak off without me noticing." Shinachiku goes on, stating the absolute truth. The slightest of smiles is on his face right now, way more subdued then the one he shared with Nami earlier.

You wanna know what makes evil people so scary? It's not the fact that they're good at doing the over-the-top evil laugh. It's that they can do the smallest expression and signal off the full weight of their killing intent behind it.

I'm looking so far away from his eyes right now that my neck is almost twisted into a 180.

"Uh, I'm…ahahahahahahahaha…HaHaHaHa…Haha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…" My laugh gets progressively more nervous with each sequential 'ha'…ahahaha…

Ha…um, don't worry, me! Any second now I'll use that brain of mine and find some sort of strategy to get out of this! Any second now…

…I'll…

…could, um…

…I-Inner Minato! What are our options here, I need another one of those multiple choice questions in my thought bubble, stat!

* * *

**A)** Try to fight (won't work).  
**B)** Run away (won't work).  
**C)** Negotiate (won't work).  
**D)** Surrender.  
**E)** —all tangled up with each other, almost like they were—

* * *

Oh, BULLSHIT!

"Seriously, I'm kinda getting the feeling you don't like me, little brother…" Shinachiku's bright green eyes, from their high perch at a head taller than I was, cast themselves in a lonely downward, like he was pretending to have a heart. Don't fall for it!

"Because you're always trying to fight with me all the time!" I shout defensively, the skin on my shoulders standing up like the hair of a hissing cat. "You're always trying to drag me by the collar off to some training ground so you can throw S-ranked Rasengan variants at me while I try to dodge for my life, or tackling me and trying to wrestle when I come downstairs to get milk out of the fridge, or hiding around the corner and making it a game for me to try to sense you before you kick me in the back of the legs when I pass by, or…!"

I kept listing my grievances before the court. I had a long list of his tyranny dating back into the hazy years in the memory bank.

"Yeah," Nii-san scratched his cheek and looked away a little. "…So?"

Uzumaki Shinachiku was filled up to his eyes with testosterone, so my words pretty much went through one ear, spun around in the part of his brain that thinks that sounds like fun, and then out the other. He's crazy, he's the only one in the world who would find stuff like that fun.

"Hey, that stuff sounds like fun!" Nami said, apparently still here.

"Shut up! You're not helping!" I spin around towards Nami and swat away her words with a shaking fist.

"So, I don't get it." Shinachiku said. "Are you saying I'm a good older brother, a bad one, or…?"

I spin back around and look up at Nii-san.

…He's a bit of a surreal sight, honestly. I didn't really notice when we were younger, but now that he's a year shy of twenty, I can kind of see what all the Prewars from our village like to say. He looks like a face from Hokage Rock come alive, with all the entrapping of youth, life, and happiness with it.

Some people say he's a reincarnation of the Fourth Hokage because he looks like him and has a similar fighting style. This is a lie, of course. Our grandfather was already long gone by the time any of us were born, but from what I understand, the Fourth Hokage was a kind man with a gentle smile and an absolute control over his own actions. Nii-san has exactly zero of those things. And he tends to rub some people the wrong way—

As popular as Shinachiku is with girls, there's a certain type that distinctly avoids him. The kinds from noble families that wore stuffy jyuunihitoe in the summer and adorned white-painted faces come the New Year. 'Undomesticable' some of them say behind his back. 'Unmarriageable', said in the huddles of those who treat such a thing as a social contract and a means of political alliance, rather than of emotion. The Fire Daimyo's Family and the more traditional elements of the Hyuuga Clan in particular seems to act like they're allergic, save one of them anyway.

—I gather my courage, and face up my older brother; like I'm Mom whenever she steps into her role of chief disciplinarian and plants a finger in front of his chest, despite the fact that Shinachiku towers over her by now. I say—

"I'm saying you should quit being such a dick all time and stop venting out all of your aggression by antagonizing everyone around you."

In these peaceful times, it's more typical of hyperactive young people to output their pent-up energy into the opposite sex than it is to pick fights. But like Dad, Shinachiku is a child at heart, so such an idea never even occurred to him.

"But I'm a tragic character!" My older brother protested, putting a knuckle to the corner of his eye and pretending to wipe away a tear. "I have a backstory with at least three tinted panels showing that I was bullied as a kid and that I just wanted to show everyone they were wrong…"

…What the hell? Is he trying to say he's some sort of sob story manga villain…?

"Nii-san, everyone in the Academy loved you because you were the Hokage's Son." I correct him. "Also, you were stronger than all of your teachers and only graduated when you were ten because the postwar rules don't allow anyone to graduate younger than that. No one ever bullied you, or anything."

"Oh, right." He perked up, instantly dropping the obvious lie.

Tsunako-san was Shinachiku's classmate and graduated at the same age he did, so I know some of this from her. She was also his genin-teammate on Team Naruto for a short while before he powerhoused his way through Chuunin, Jounin, ANBU, and ANBU Captain all in about the course of two years, dragging her along with him.

It's freaky how strong geniuses can be. He'd probably be Hokage by now, if Dad weren't literally the strongest person to ever live. How did he get this way…? Not entirely sure. It's hard for me to remember back this far, but I remember Shinachiku being really polite before he entered the Academy, shy even. And then somewhere along the way on the path of a Ninja, he got infected with the wildness of manhood, along with an unrelenting drive to get stronger.

"—If you understand, then let me go upstairs and lock myself in my room in peace! Dattebaro!"

"Sure." Shinachiku stepped to the side, getting out of the way. "Just go upstairs if you're so much of a coward…" He says 'coward' with a bit of a rising tone at the end, his eyes glancing off into their upper-right corners, inviting me to come prove him wrong…

…I decide not to take the bait, and walk straight past him. Damn straight I'm a coward. I'm not falling for this one.

I get all the way up to edge of his armspan before he reaches out at my scalp and digs his fingers into the crown of my skull, stopping me in my tracks.

"**Hey!**" He shouts, madder than I am. "What the fuck, Minato?! You were totally supposed to go 'I'm not a coward!' there, and then go into a big monologue about pride or something while orchestral music slowly bled into background, until it finally hits crescendo and you jump at me and we have this huge epic fight!"

I think someone's watched a few too many of those manga-adapted action cartoons that are starting to get popular.

"I don't care." I said. "I hate confrontation, alright? Besides, you know I can't really do anything like that with my condition. Just let me go already."

Like I said before, Shinachiku and I are polar opposites. And all of the ways we're different really just boil down to one key difference—

Shinachiku loves to fight. He likes actions over words, excitement over rationality, and he loves pushing people to see if he can get their true self to come out.

Me? I hate fighting. I hate the taste of iron in my mouth, I hate putting myself in do-or-die situations where people might get a peek into this crazy party that's going on in my head. Maybe it's because I'm so bad at fighting that I hate it. Maybe it's because it's my job to patch up the hot-blooded types after the fact.

What's so cool about watching your friends get hurt? What's so fun about beating up on someone weaker than you just to prove how much of a badass you are? What's so great about doing it over and over until your village hates that village because they've beat up on everyone you know, and that village hates your village because you've beat up on everyone they know? Maybe if I were a little cooler, a little stupider, a little less girly and more heroic—maybe I'd get it. But, honestly, I'm just a boring healer. I don't get it at all.

"—And what's up with this weird stuff in your hair, man?" Shinachiku, ignoring what I said, took his pointer finger and thumb off my head for a second, rubbing together some of the chalk on his hands. His chakra-enhanced grip strength's like the claw of an industrial crane. I can't escape even with only three of his fingers holding onto me.

"The white powdery stuff? That's just chalk, Nami hit me with the 'eraser over the sliding door' trick." I answer.

"It was amazing! I give myself nine out of ten stars!" Nami shouted, overhearing us. I don't think her self-reviews ever went anywhere under eight out of ten, so that's actually an average score.

Nii-san looked at Nami. Then he looked back at my head. It looked like he was thinking up something.

And then after a second,

**the Evil Smile Returned.**

The slight, subdued one. Unlike Nami, Shinachiku isn't an idiot, he's a true elite-level shinobi. His only flaw in that regard was that he was too honest, he was choreographing exactly what he was thinking on his face.

"Really…?" He starts talking after his moment of deliberation. He's definitely thought up something evil. "I'm not really talking about the chalk though, there's this other stuff in here too—"

"Huh?" I'm confused. What's he talking about…?

"—it's just that there's all this weird stuff in your hair…what's this, blond?" Shinachiku asks with faux-curiosity, like he already knows the answer to the question he's asking. "That's weird, Minato, I don't remember your hair looking blond when we were kids…"

"Ah—!" An involuntary noise gets forced out of me when I realize what he's getting at.

"…Think I got a new technique that can help you out with this…you know how Wind Release: Rasenshuriken does microscopic damage to people? I think I can use a Water Release version to unbind all that stuff that's stuck to your hair follicles and making you look blond."

"But…your chakra affinity is Fire! You can't even use Water Release!" I protest.

"Of course I can, I can use all five!" Shinachiku extended out his free arm and spun some chakra together, beginning an S-class Elemental Rasengan—direct application of which to my head carrying a very short symptom list, namely, the unambiguous medical side effect known as 'immediate death'.

"I'll get that stuff out of your hair, for sure!" Shinachiku beams.

"I'll die, for sure!" I shout. "I'll die-ttebayo!"

That evil grin on Shinachiku's face magnifies. "Oh, I'm definitely doing it now that you've made that joke."

"I couldn't resist, okay! Mercy, mercy! I really can't survive a point-blank Rasengan to the top of my head!"

"Oh, don't worry." That evilness in Shinachiku's face suddenly turns into fake sincerity. "I made a weaker C-ranked version of the Rasengan just for you. All it'll do is get rid of that weird stuff in your hair."

"T-there's no way you invented a variant of the Rasengan just for the sole purpose of bullying me!"

There's no way he could actually have done that…right?

—Shinachiku held out his free hand. A micro-Rasengan with trace amounts of water release spun up and glowed above his palm. He did. He did just invent a new Rasengan just for the sole purpose of bullying me.

"I take it back!" I plead. "Kill me instead! Anything other than this, alright?! It takes me two weeks just to get my roots ready and then another two weeks of bleaching just to get it to look somewhat normal!"

My natural hair color is especially resilient, so much so that it takes a whole month to change into something else. Even then, anything minor such as using the wrong shampoo can make some of the real parts shine through. It's a real pain.

You might think it's weird that a guy puts so much effort into making his hair look a different color. It's not weird at all. If you knew what I was covering up, you'd understand.

"—Alright, fine—" Shinachiku let go of my head with a slight, subdued smile…

**Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!**

…And then a clone of his appeared in front of me, effectively flanking me on both sides and blocking all escape.

"—if you can get past my clone in ten seconds, I'll let you die." His shadow clone poked me in the forehead with his pinkie. "Ten…nine…eight…"

His arm gradually lowered down in pace with the countdown…gotta think of something!

I try running past him. My legs move wildly, but the rest of me doesn't. Shinachiku's chakra-enhanced physical strength is about half as strong as Mom's is, which means his physical strength is roughly on par with the Fifth Hokage's in her prime. Forcing my way past him this way is impossible.

"Six…five…"

Look up. Look down. If I had more time, I could cut a hole in the ceiling and escape to the floor above…I'll need a different plan.

"Three…two…"

I bite into the finger of the clone holding me back. Some green chakra comes out of my teeth and tries to heal him when I do. I don't know what I expected.

"…One…"

Dammit; no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no…

"…Zero."

—A miniature rasengan hit me on the top of the head.

A burst of spiraling chakra and water. It feels like my hair is being washed in the middle of a whirlpool. Doesn't really hurt, but I wouldn't recommend it.

"—See, all done. That wasn't so bad, was it?" Shinachiku says, his jutsu over. It's his victory.

I look up at one of my bangs, and I see…

…The flutter of cherry blossoms through the air in their springtime bloom…

"Ah, nuh, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" I scream in defeat, having suffered the worst humiliation.

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Shinachiku laughs maniacally as his clone disperses with a cloud of smoke. Turns out he's good at the over-the-top evil laugh too.

I collapse limply on the ground without the clone to prop me up, all the fight in my body having left with my pride.

Ah…why my hair…everyone knows I'm sensitive about this. Why'd he have to go and be such a dick about it…ah…

"Oh, I've been violated…" Some meaningless words leave my mouth as my face squishes against the floor and I deathly stare a thousand yards away. "My innocence has been stolen against my will…my most shameful side has been shown to the whole world, I'm ruined for marriage, and now I can never be a groom…"

"Eh, seriously? All I did was give you a high-powered noogie. Don't be so dramatic." Shinachiku looked a little nervous at the sudden dark turn in my dialogue. He was probably expecting me to laugh with him and go 'ah, you got me!' or something like that.

"That looks fun!" Nami jumped up and shouted. "I wanna violate you too, Mina-nii!" With a parted-teeth smile and exactly zero understanding of what she just said, Nami jumps on my back and squeezes me with an attack-hug.

"Gah, ah, ah…" I heave myself against the floor, something deep inside me starting to leak out.

"Huh…?" Shinachiku's grin vanishes pretty quickly once he starts hearing the pathetic noises coming out of me.

"Ah, ah, ahhhh…" I whine like an injured puppy. Why did he have to…he knows there's a reason why I…ah…hck…

Shinachiku's eyes get really wide when he's realized he's pushed me too far. "Ah, ah, d-don't cry! That and dying are the worst! Don't do either!"

In a complete 180, he frantically tries to stop the emotional reaction that he set in motion, his face probably looking pretty panic-stricken.

"GA…" The feeling of tears gathered in the corner of my eyes tickles a hidden fury out of the shackles of self-restraint. "**GAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!**"

"Eh—!" Shinachiku and Hanami both bolt off and away from me.

"I can handle being the weakest ninja in my family!" I shout. "I can handle being the weakest ninja in my group of friends! I can handle having a mom with super-strength and an overpowered dad that encourages everyone my age to be a bunch of idiots! But KAMISAMA, WHY—"

I point at my head, now exposed with its natural hair color—the hair I was so embarrassed about as a wild little kid, and shout at the heavens:

"WHY IS MY HAIR **PIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK?!**"

—My hair was as pink as sakura trees in full bloom.

What did I do in my last life to deserve this, huh? Was I Uchiha Madara?! Did I try to take over the world with the sleepy-dreamy-thingy no jutsu? Did I do something that pissed you off somehow, huh? DID I PISS YOU OFF, GOD?!

"Just calm down, little bro, deep breaths, think about happy memories…" Shinachiku nervously tried to make amends while my vision was cloaked in the sight of my own chakra.

"**THAT'S IT!"** Inner Minato shouted at me, released from his binds. **"LET'S PICK UP THE WHOLE GODDAMN HOUSE! LET'S FLIP THIS MOTHERFUCKER THE FUCK OVER! WE'LL KILL EVERYONE INSIDE AND CRUSH THEIR CORPSES INTO THOUSANDS OF LITTLE GROUND-UP BLOODY SPECKS SO THAT NOT EVEN EDO TENSEI CAN BRING THEM BACK! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"**

"[Hey, Minato! It's really dangerous if you suddenly spike up your chakra that high, after all, **you're—!**]" Shinachiku says something, but I can't hear him.

I focus all of my chakra into a single point, nearly pitch-perfect chakra control. I go through all of the steps Mom taught me years ago when trying to increase my physical strength with chakra control, and replicate each of them just like I should. Find a focal point that's comfortable—for me, right between the knuckles of the middle and ring finger—and release everything on impact with timing as close to zero as possible. Even though it's been years since I last tried to use this, my body remembers the way how perfectly.

—My punch flies towards the nearest wall, with so much directed chakra behind it that it'll bring everything around me crashing down—

—before anyone can stop me, with every bit of strength I have—

—illuminated by the faint glow of green, my chakra incarnated—

—Everything slows down around me at the last few centimeters before I hit the wall, as if in slow-motion. I know exactly what's going to happen. But I don't stop myself. I hit exactly where I mean to, with no pauses or stops—

**THUD**

My fist harmlessly hits the wall with all of my power, softly bouncing off, stopped by nothing more than the unremarkable strength of the framing behind it. Something breaks, but it's nothing that's outside of me.

That green chakra of mine seeps from my hand and spreads around the undamaged point of impact where my knuckles are, like it's trying to heal the inanimate wall…

…Well, there's no 'like' about it. That's exactly what it's trying to do.

—Even after all the noise we just made, there's suddenly nothing but a uniform silence—from Shinachiku, Nami, and myself. There's a reason why.

…The air's stale. They don't know what to say. My overtalkative, hyperactive family…they know exactly what just happened. What my impotent little bit of rage signifies. And they're worried about me, but they don't what to say.

**Lub-Dub. Lub-Dub. Lub-Lub-Lub**…**Dub.**

—My heart beats painfully against my chest in its irregular rhythm, going up to steps three and four in the ten-step journey towards a heart attack—and then settles back down peacefully at step one. My heart's not the best. A small little side effect of a greater cause.

…In case you haven't figured it out by now…

…This is that 'defect' I've been talking about.

The only ninja abilities I can use are harmless types of Medical Ninjutsu, basic ninja tools like kunai that do not use chakra flow, and fundamental movement techniques like focusing chakra to my legs to jump really high or move faster—or controlling my chakra to walk on trees or water. Everything else is impossible thanks to the diagnosis that was handed down to me seven years ago.

I don't like to talk about it. The more I do, the more I feel like I'm giving myself an excuse to not try in life and to not care. There are plenty of people out there who have it worse than I do. It'd be disrespectful to them and everyone who cares about me to get all depressed about it.

—My outstretched arm falls limply back to my side, my curled-up fingers loosening flat. My hand hurts.

I felt my mind wander somewhere else, towards something like a dream about sometime long ago.

Towards a dream where I was standing in the middle of an ocean, watching everyone's backs as they disappeared faraway—

Towards the dream of that day when my once-blue chakra had turned green—


	10. Standstill

'Chakra Points Disunion Syndrome'

My defect as a shinobi. It's a bit of a mouthful, first spoken to me out of the mouth of the medic-nin in my hospital room when I was nine years old. Apparently, I was the first one to get diagnosed with my condition in over thirty years.

The symptoms vary wildly from case to case, all centered around a general loss of ninja abilities. There's no known cure, even between Mom's knowledge of medical ninjutsu and Dad's Yin-Yang Release. Some people randomly get better after a few months. Some cases last their entire lifetime. I'm the latter.

It uniquely affects only ninja with excellent chakra control. Only the ones good enough to subconsciously sever the microscopic connections between tenketsu without any conscious intention to.

It was first documented during the Second Shinobi World War, affecting medic-nin that suffered from PTSD and tried too hard to push through it. Sometimes just a few too many of their friends had died, just a few too many lost causes made it to their table, but they'd just get used to all the shaking in their hands and keep going anyway. Something in their head would snap. The same abilities they had learned to use on others—making precision cuts to vital parts of the anatomy, manipulating electrical signals in the nervous system—would turn on their own body like some sort of autoimmune disease.

Nothing that horrible ever happened to me. I just made a stupid mistake as a kid.

I was sparring with another Leaf Ninja a few years older than me. Someone way stronger and more popular than I was. They were taunting me and encouraging me to go all out. I was getting really pissed off.

It was around this time that I had started learning medical ninjutsu—including chakra enhanced strength, the technique that used pinpoint chakra control to focus and release all of one's chakra in a single spot—giving the user superhuman strength. Apparently, according to Mom anyway, I was some sort of prodigy at using it. When I was nine, I could already hit at about 40% of the strength that the Fifth Hokage could manage during her prime, and about 20% of max strength that she could manage. Mom also told me to not use it until I had trained more and gotten used to it, but parents can never quite control everything their kids think and do.

I punched the other kid as hard as I could. We weren't supposed to use killing techniques on each other. I just kind of figured it would work out like those times Mom hit Dad. Stupid, stupid thing to do.

He was hospitalized in critical condition. I saw a bunch of tubes coming out of the spot where I detached his ribs from his skeleton. If I had aimed my fist a little higher, he probably would've died from the shock to his vital organs.

I think I realized at that point something that most Postwar ninja have the luxury of not knowing. Ninja villages today talk about peace and love and how fighting is bad and how we should always try to talk our problems out first, but the reality of the techniques we use wasn't quite as simple. We were learning techniques that were designed to kill and disable enemies before they could do the same to us.

—Something in my head snapped. I collapsed the same day I had gotten into that fight.

I ended up in the same hospital room as the kid I put there. I didn't recover quite as well as he did.

There was an overall 80% reduction in my total chakra capacity. Additionally, the damage I had done to myself had caused an onset of juvenile arrhythmia, and I had lost motor function in my right leg and would need intensive care to walk again. And there was a particular quirk no one had ever seen before.

—My once-blue chakra was now permanently colored green.

Or, to say it a little more clearly—I can only heal people. I can't hurt them. Not even if I want to. Not even if they're another ninja trying to kill me and my life depends on it.

It's not just harder for me than it is for other people, or all in my head, or anything like that. It's physically impossible.

Taijutsu? Each time I hit someone, my hand or foot glows green and heals them instead. The harder I hit them, the more they heal.

Genjustu? Didn't work either.

Ninjutsu? The only chakra-based stuff that I can use anymore are those that can only actively and exclusively mend another human being. Basically, I'm limited to Medical Ninjutsu. And I can't even use all of that. Anything that's too heavily based on Yang Release or otherwise chakra-based and has the potential to harm someone—like Chakra Scalpels, or the Chakra Enhanced Strength that I misused—it doesn't work any more. And I know that for a fact. I've tried.

And that includes the Rasengan. Which I've trained every single day since I got out of the hospital. And every single one of those days—I've never made any progress—even though I was already past steps 1 and 2. Even if I was in the middle of learning it right before everything changed. It doesn't matter.

I'll never master the Rasengan like the rest of my family. It doesn't matter if spend the rest of my life working harder than everyone else, giving speeches about my ninja way or whatever. A bird with clipped wings cannot fly, and a bird that loses their wings will never get them back.

That's Chakra Points Disunion Syndrome, my 'defect', the one that I've been talking up so much today. I'm not some troubled prodigy, or some super-talented hero with one critical flaw, or some airheaded kid with some dumb curse that conveniently powers them up once they feel sad enough. I have a disability. And when it comes to combat, and all of the cool stuff that makes a ninja a ninja—I'm the weakest, and I have the weakest potential for improving out of everyone in the village. By far. Sorry if I gave you the wrong idea by being all indirect about it.

—I was looking out the hospital window after the medic-nin in my room got done explaining my symptoms. He told me my medication schedule and the year's worth of rehab they had scheduled to help me get walking again. And then he told me that I'd likely never be a ninja again. I didn't listen to the rest.

The whole time I was in there, Mom had been taking time off work and coming down from her office to visit my room and talk to me. Dad came a lot too. A lot of friends I didn't even know I had showed up too. They were all a lot more emotional about the whole thing than I was.

I wasn't really talking that much myself. I couldn't move around and do the things I loved anymore, so it was getting a little hard to express myself like I used to. Think it was around this time Inner Minato first popped up so I'd have someone to understand all of the things that were spiraling around in my mind.

—The day I was diagnosed, Shinachiku got me out of bed and wheeled me up to the hospital roof.

We didn't say anything to each other. He just silently stood there behind me the whole time, his fingers vised around the handles of my wheelchair.

We stayed on the rooftop like that and watched the sun rise and set. The long shadows cast over the village by the faces of Hokage Rock stretched further than they ever had before that day.


	11. Uzumaki Siblings V

—My outstretched arm falls limply back to my side. My mind comes back to today.

I pant a few times before my inhales shallow out.

I'm breathing normally again. Good.

All of that inner anger of mine dissipated once I realized my heartbeats were a little too quick. I have myself trained to calm back down whenever I start to go too off the rails. Dying from a self-induced heart attack like an idiot's not really the way I wanna go.

—I look over at Shinachiku. His eyebrows are upturned, a confused smile on his face. My always-confident older brother is unsure of what to say.

He's probably wondering what I'm thinking right now. Whether if all that's on my mind is the pink hair, or if that harsh reminder I just gave myself—that utter failure of an attempt at ninjutsu that couldn't even kill a fly—is filling my head with the fact that I'm different than everyone else.

…When it comes to people who live with some sort of a disorder or disability, there's nothing worse that someone can give them than constant pity. The feeling that you're just some sort of helpless creature that can't make anyone happy on your own, because everyone's obligated to feel sad whenever they see you.

—We both just kind of stood there, looking at each other like that. There's no longer any playful scorn or bullying in Shinachiku's face. Just the earnest intention he has behind all of it.

If my older brother acted the opposite, if he acted as if I were a small creature that needed constant love and affection lest I shatter, I don't think I'd be able to forgive him. Is going in the opposite direction—being the hand against my back that pushes harder than all the rest—the right thing to do?

I dunno. And I'm sure Shinachiku doesn't either. I can't hate my brother for not knowing exactly what to do in every situation, for being a human being that can make mistakes. And I'm not so weak that I can't take it—

I might not be the coolest, or the strongest, or the manliest—but I'm not some stray defenseless animal that passersby can pet on the head so they can self-indulge in their own kindness for a moment. My name is Uzumaki Minato—I am a son of Uzumaki Naruto and Uzumaki Sakura. The blood of quitters doesn't run through my veins.

And I'm also a perfectly respectable medic-nin, not much else. And I can live with that.

"…Hey…" Shinachiku nervously spoke first, after a long while. "…You alright, Minato…?"

It's very easy to see that he feels guilty. So I'll go ahead and cut my whining short after I've ranted for a bit, before it gets too repetitive and depressing.

"—Keh, pink hair…why…" I say exactly half of what's on my mind.

It's not fair. Nii-san's named after fermented bamboo shoots—a ramen topping—and he gets to look like the Fourth Hokage with green eyes. I'm named after the freaking Fourth, and I get pink hair. Why.

And it doesn't help that I used to have a feminine face before I hit adolescence. Back in the Academy I used to get love confessions stuffed in my locker by other boys who thought I was a girl.

"I'm a guy dammit, I'm a guyyyyyyyy." I cry; two trails of tears, bound by squiggly lines, appearing underneath my eyes.

"We know, we know." Shinachiku rubs the back of his scalp and lets his mouth hang open, a bit in exasperation. "Everyone knows you're a guy now. You don't look as girly in the face as you did when we were little kids, and everyone who was in your class got the idea after a few years." He pointed his thumb at himself and gave a Dad-smile. "Besides, if anyone tries to say otherwise, you can always come to me. I'll teach you how to shut them up."

"Eh, if it were Nami being picked on, you'd just beat them up yourself…" I looked away. Easy for him to say. What am I supposed to do, punch them so hard that I heal them to death…?

"Yeah, and I'd beat them up for you too if you really needed me to." Shinachiku put his hand back on my head. "But you're way smarter than me, and just as stubborn, and you have this scary talent when it comes to figuring out how people tick and using it to get them to do what you want. You can figure out things own, and if it ever gets too hard and you feel like you can't—then I'll come bail you out—anytime you need me to. Until then, you're the younger brother. You get the tougher love."

He messed with the top of my head, less violently this time. As if to chastise me. As if to encourage me.

I guess that's just how older brothers are.

"Don't grow your whiskers out over it." Shinachiku went on, grinning.

"None of us even have whiskers…"

This should be common sense, but obviously none of us have Dad-style whiskers on our face. We're the children of the Sixth Hokage, not the big furry red thing that lives in his stomach.

"I kinda like it, though." Nami smiled, noticing that I've calmed down. "It's really and soft and pretty like Mom's. When you bleach it, it gets really hard and wiry, and makes you look like kind of a bad guy. I think your hair looks cooler this way."

'Soft and pretty' isn't exactly what I'm going for.

Guy ninjas are supposed to be gutsy and bold, or mysterious and cool. Not freaking pink.

—I sigh out everything in my lungs, twenty emotions leaving my mouth when I do.

I really do have a good family. I know we fight and get on each other's nerves. I know we might look a little weird—if such a thing as a family that's normal exists. But I think I can say without any regret…that I love them, and that I'd do anything for them…just don't tell anyone I said that, okay?

"—Uh, before I forget, guess I should apologize for ruining your meal." Shinachiku pointed his thumb at the two bowls of ramen at the table, both cold with soggy noodles. "Sorry 'bout that."

I'm pretty sure he's actually sorry about something else, but neither of us want to talk about it.

"It's fine." I say. "It was just fifteen minute shouyu ramen. I can reheat the soup in throw in some fresh noodles."

It's kind of wasteful, but it's no big deal. I can always just cook it again.

"—**Oh?**"

Out of nowhere, a fourth voice has joined in on our conversation.

"**Perhaps I can be of help, then—?**"

Shinachiku, Nami, and I all turn around slowly, looking at the stranger who has made their way into our home—

"GAH—" The whites in Nami's eyes overtake the blues as she's struck with sheer terror. "GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA—" She screams at the sight.

In this loving, (sort of) innocent household of ours—

**A horror movie villain has appeared.**

Brown-black hair, mid-neck length, straight with pointed locks at the ends. **It was as dark as her murderous past.**

An oval-shaped porcelain mask, perfectly absent of any animal features or paint. Her unnatural eyes peered through the round holes in her mask,** studying her new prey.**

Her sword is drawn from her sheath, the blade carried low at her side. **It drips with the blood of her victims, ever thirsty for the taste of that which never quenches.**

Alright, not gonna lie, I just made up all of that stuff in the bolded text again. It's just Tsunako-san. That Anbu girl from earlier, remember?

"Yo, Nako-chan." Shinachiku nonchalantly said, greeting her by raising a hand with loose fingers. They were pretty used to each other.

"—AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH—" Nami's still screaming.

"Good evening. Shina-kun. Minato-kun. Hanami-chan." Tsunako sheathes her oowakizashi and bows her head low enough for at least two of us to see her neck, and then stands back up straight. She's changed out from the black-and-purple traditional clothes into the standard Anbu uniform. Silver flak jacket, black pants and sleeveless shirt, metal forearm guards wrapped around her arms.

"—AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH—" Nami's still screaming.

"I saw Shina-kun suddenly teleport away, and decided to come as extra assurance…I had thought that it was likely a false alarm, but…" She looked at the only Uzumaki Sibling shorter than her, concerned. "…Is everything alright?"

"—AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH—" Nami's still screaming. The lungs on this girl.

"Ahhhh, you didn't need to do that. We're fine." Shinachiku sighed. Then he gripped the back of Nami's head and directed her gaze at the mystery figure that's causing her such terror. "It's just Nako-chan, Nami. Calm down."

"—AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH—Oh! Nako-nee!" Nami goes from screaming to shouting happily without taking a breath or any transition whatsoever. "My less pretty big sister!"

"…Eh?" A noise of some slight shock escaped Tsunako's lips, black-brown hair rising and falling in place. Being a rather polite person herself, Tsunako-san is a little taken aback by the sudden attack on her pride.

"Uh, Nami?" I decide to defuse the situation before it can potentially escalate. "You probably shouldn't say something like that to another girl. You might ignite a small war. Also, who told you to say that?"

I skip straight past the 'what' and 'why' and go straight for asking who the true culprit is. My little sister can be rude, but she's not mean-spirited. There's another person at work here.

"Koko-nee." Nami replies honestly, not trying to hide it. Kinda figured it was her, but it was worth having her say it out loud to everyone else.

Nami doesn't have any blood-related siblings other than Nii-san and I, but she does have two people in her life that she's dubbed 'big sister'. And 'Koko-nee' meant Sarutobi Koyoka, the other one along with our dear Anbu friend here. You might remember me mentioning her name a few times, too.

"The monkey girl, huh?" Shinachiku closed one eye and raised the brow of the other. He was amused, but not too impressed.

Koyoka's…ah, how do I put this nicely…a very competitive person. She doesn't usually get along very well with other kunoichi, especially other attractive ones. She loves taking jabs at other people like this and trying to incite them into action.

"—Well, if that is the case…" Tsunako-san put her hands to her knees and leaned over Nami as a gentle adult would for a young child. She's not that tall, but her actions were indicative of a maternal-like maturity. "You can tell Sarutobi-san that if she wishes to speak so strongly of me, she is more than free to do so directly upon my person. In fact, I would be more than happy to do the same for her; face-to-face, at any time she so pleases, at any place she would find herself comfortable in." Tsunako-san smiled, the corners of her mouth just visible through the shadowed gap of her mask when she leaned forward. "Can you please tell her that for me, Hanami-chan?"

A girl's smile can mean a lot of things. Depending on the context.

"Hai!" Nami saluted, happy to play her part as the neutral messenger in this guerrilla conflict.

Think I was wrong about the whole 'ignite a small war' thing. Tsunako's dad once Jounin-sensei'd for Koyoka (probably would've for me too, if I didn't get held back a year from getting stuck in that hospital), so they're already familiar with each other. And there's probably already a war.

"—That aside, I overhead you speak of an issue regarding dinner? Perhaps I can help?" Tsunako-san asked, a rising intonation in her voice. She might be an assassin and a black operations specialist by profession, but her true passion in life apparently is trying to be the ideal housewife. She isn't married to anything other than her own sense of duty, though, so all of her efforts in that category get pushed onto us.

"Sure!" Nami says, not a second thought in her brain.

"Eh, why not?" Said Shinachiku, as if it was only natural for someone to conveniently show up and make food for you.

"Ah, no, no, no, we can handle it ourselves, you don't have to…" I say, the only one of us three trying to be polite.

"Ah, no, no, no, I insist." Tsunako-san zeroes in on me.

"Ah, no, no, no…" I tried to reject her helpfulness again.

"Ah, no, no, no, I insist, I insist…" She rejects my rejection again and again.

In our culture, it's common for old geezers going out to eat to all jump over each other trying to pick up the tab. Each of them will say 'Ah, no, no, no, I'LL pay, I insist!' until everyone's had at least two turns to offer to pay, everyone else refusing and saying they'll pay instead, until finally the bill falls onto the oldest person present on his third attempt to pay the bill. It's a pretty time-consuming and oldschool style of social etiquette, and most young people just opt out.

Our Anbu bodyguard here is nineteen years old, the same age as Shinachiku, but she was born in the wrong era.

"—Ah…is that so…? Thank you very much, Tsunako-san." I bow 30 degrees, finally accepting her help and giving one of the standard replies to these scenarios.

"I am entirely happy to help." She bows back. "Please pardon me if I am in the way—"

It looks stupid, I know. But just acting like this is all natural, not humbling yourself in return to someone who's doing the same for you…I dunno, just rubs me the wrong way. A lot of people are willing to lower themselves down below us because of who our father is and what he did—what we had nothing to do with.

My brother and sister are fine the way they are—Shinachiku's a childhood friend of hers, and Nami's just a goodhearted idiot. But I can come off as being a lot more uptight than they are. I have to make an effort not to look like a brat.

"—Oh, Nako-nee! Can you make tonkotsu ramen tonight?" Nami asks. She's making no such efforts herself right now.

"I cannot, Hanami-chan. Not in an amount of time that would be appropriate, at least." Tsunako cupped her hands together. "I can, however, make the miso ramen with extra chashu that you always order from Ichiraku…perhaps not as well as they make it, but still—"

"—I love you the best, Nako-nee!" Nami hugs the masked assassin with all of her strength, making it three for three today. Tsunako's not really the huggy sort, so she uncomfortably fidgets for a moment before passively accepting Nami's invasion into her personal space.

…Suggesting miso ramen with extra chashu in place of tonkotsu…that would satisfy someone's cravings for pork…why didn't I think of that…?

Being of the Yamato Nadeshiko archetype, Tsunako is a natural-born cook who could slave over a kitchen for hours making food for a family of ten, and then politely decline every compliment about how amazing she is come dinnertime. She's not human, I swear.

"Keh, the perfect housewife…" I look away and mutter. "My cooking skills as the guy with slightly effeminate traits cannot compete…"

"Um, that's not true…" Tsunako-san tries to go her usual route of deflecting compliments and complimenting the other person. "I think you're very effeminate, Minato-k—"

"SHUT UP!" I barked at her, my eyes turning into angry white ovals. "I'm a male, dammit…! Testosterone! Action Movies! Healthy Sperm Count!"

Tsunako recoiled at my sudden outburst. "U-um, is that so…ahem…my mistake…" She puts a curled-up hand in front of the invisible mouth of her porcelain mask, the shapes in the eyeholes glancing away. She's not sure what she did wrong.

Shinachiku pulls her aside and starts whispering to her, starting a hushed conversation—

"[Hey, Nako-chan? Don't pick on Minato right now. He might explode if you do.]"

"[I see…did something happen? He seems considerably less levelheaded than usual…]"

"[Yeah, it's my bad. I was kinda being a dick to him. See his hair…?]"

"[Shina-kun, you really shouldn't be mean to your younger brother. Bullying family isn't cool at all…]"

"[Yeah, I know, I know…]" Shinachiku's eyes closed, his eyebrows tied into a dissatisfied knot.

Wonder what they're whispering about…looks like she's lightly scolding him about something. She has to bend her neck back a lot further back than I do to look up at him. Tsunako-san's a little bit shy of 160 cm, and Shinachiku's over 180. In overseas terms, I think that means he's almost a foot taller than her.

"Well, if it is all the same…" Tsunako says after her secret conversation with my older brother. Time to cook.

We move to the kitchen. Our masked bodyguard's already familiar with the layout and where everything is, so it doesn't take her any time to get started. She deftly summons out everything she needs from the kitchen, neatly arranging all the ingredients into rows on top of the counter.

"—Here, Tsunako-san, you're going to start with broth, right…?" I rewash my hands. "I'll chop and wash the vegetables for the broth handle the marinade for the eggs."

"Ah, no, no, no, you don't need—"

"Please just say yes." My eyebrows point up. "I'm trying to get better at cooking myself, and I can always learn something by watching you." I circumvent her overpoliteness by making it look like I'm the one imposing.

"Ah, there is absolutely no issue with that. And I suppose it would be quicker this way." She quickly changes her tune. "Please, feel free."

"—Then I'll help out too. Why not?" Shinachiku butts in.

"NO!" I shout with the fury of a nine-tailed demon. "No, no, no!"

"Is this another one of those politeness games where I have to insist three times?" Shinachiku puts his hand to his chin, curious. "Because I'm not too good with these kinds of things, I like honesty better."

"I am being honest! I mean 'no' as in you're banned from the kitchen for all eternity." I clarify. "You're as bad at making food as Mom is."

"Hey, take that back!" Shinachiku protests. "No one's worse at cooking than Mom is! Remember that one time when she almost killed us?!"

I cocked my head. "You're going to have to be more specific, she's done that a few times."

"I mean that time she made rice balls with special filling, and everyone passed out! Dad ate a ton and had to go into Sage Mode so he wouldn't die!"

"Oh…right. That time." I recall Shinachiku's story. I wasn't conscious for most of it, but somehow Mom managed to make a highly lethal, odorless substance out of nothing more than egg whites, vinegar, and an array of packaged seasonings. How Mom managed to do this, exactly, was actually a subject of great scientific curiosity once my coworkers got wind of it. Her special rice ball filling was later analyzed in a lab, and then hailed as a serendipitous breakthrough in the fields of chemistry and medicine. They immediately presented Mom with the miraculous news. The lab was destroyed with a single punch.

Mom's not bad with food as long as it's something simple…it's just that she's too talented of a poisonmaker. Each time she gets too into it, her instincts kick in, and she ends up making something terrible.

"…Alright, maybe not that bad, Nii-san, but you're still pretty bad. Stay away from the food supply."

"Oooohhhhh, come on!" Shinachiku insists. "I won't do anything without your permission, I'll just be the lowly assistant's assistant, the bitch's bitch!"

"Grrr…but…" I'm still a little mad at him for my recent pinkification.

"Come on, you can be senpai! I'll be the clumsy underclassman running late to class with toast in my mouth!" Shinachiku intently stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth like an idiot. "Put me in coach!"

"Ahhh, fine." I sigh out. "Do whatever you want. Wash your hands and help me with the green onions if you really feel like it."

"Yes, sir!" He happily replied. I don't think I need to point out the irony of him calling me that.

"—Then I'll be the taste tester!" Nami butted in.

"—You'll be the dishwasher!" I smiled.

"Nooooo…" Nami cries weakly in despair.

"What are you getting all sad for? Thought you'd be more excited, Nami…" I look off into the upper corners of my eyes and slowly sidle up to Shinachiku, giving a sales pitch for the superior specimen right next to me. "Especially when Nii-san here washed dishes every day when he was learning the Rasengan…he even told me that it was his secret training that he used to become the youngest ninja in history to master it…"

"I did?" Shinachiku asks.

I dig a thumb into the back of his ribs. He heals for 5 HP.

"I mean yeah, I did!" Shinachiku corrects himself. "I washed dishes all the time. Yep. That's why I'm so fast, I washed dishes every day until I was the fastest."

"Eh?" Nami's eyes turned into suspicious black lines. "That sounds really uncool…and I don't remember you ever washing dishes, Onii-chan…"

"That's because I was doing it so fast, no one could see it." Shinachiku winked and lied through his teeth.

"Wha—Wow!" Nami's eyes got really wide. "That's cool as hell! There's no choice, I have to become the best dishwasher! Dattebana!" Uzumaki Hanami pumped her fists towards herself and then ran off to the pile of dishes in the sink. I get the feeling she's going to break a few of them.

—I ask Nii-san to grab two knives for me, and whisk together the egg bath that the soft-boiled eggs are going to go in—1/2 cup mirin, 3 tablespoons of soy sauce, 1/2 cup of water, splash of sesame oil, 1 tablespoon and 1 teaspoon of white granulated sugar. It blends into a sticky dark brown, the harsher and cider-like odor of dark soy sauce mapled with a fragrance of something sweeter, a swirl within the nose like that of cinnamon. It's a little hard to describe…but if I had to sum it up, I'd say it's like—

"—Oooohh Nakkkooo-channnn." Shinachiku sung, having grabbed five knives. "**Think fast!**" He threw the sharpest one straight towards the back of her head, **a guaranteed kill—**

—She caught it between two fingers, having casually raised a hand away from the miso broth and behind her head.

"Nice reflexes." Shinachiku complimented her. "Looks like those eyes in the back of your head work even when you're multitasking."

"Shina-kun, please don't throw knives in the kitchen. Someone could get hurt." Tsunako gently set the knife back down on the counter. Her 'disappointed mother-in-law' frown could be sensed through the porcelain.

"Really? Just mild disappointment about playing around in the kitchen?" Shinachiku smirked with a parted mouth and white teeth. "No anger over the attempted murder?"

"'Murder' would constitute an intent to kill." Tsunako explained. "If you wanted to kill me, you would not have announced my name beforehand, and you would have aimed for my blind spot above the first thoracic vertebrae. Moreover—"

She pointed at the handle of the knife that Shinachiku had thrown. It had the Hiraishin seal on it, freshly inked.

"—you would have teleported at the very last moment if you had thought I were in real danger, which I was not."

"Oh, so basically if it did hit, it would've been voluntary manslaughter instead? I'd be sentenced to ten, be out in six years on good behavior?" Shinachiku grinned. Then, he leans over towards me. "Look at that, Minato. This is what happens when you bully a girl too many times. She becomes immune to all of your efforts to piss her off, and begins plotting the best way to kill you in your sleep."

"I am not plotting anything, let alone something that awful…" Tsunako-san sadly says, put off by the suggestion. She didn't share Shinachiku's propensity towards darker jokes.

"—Hey, can I try?" Nami asks, seeing Shinachiku's half-assed assassination attempt. "Just give me a second…here!" She fishes a kitchen knife out of the sink…OH, **now** you'll get a dirty knife out of the sink…you little…!

"Good idea, Nami!" Shinachiku encourages her, and slips the handles of his four remaining knives in between his knuckles. "Hey, Nako-chan! Wanna do some makeshift kunai deflection practice? You can use that knife I threw at you to block…Oooo, or you can use this spoon if you want to do hard mode."

You wanna know what real hard mode is? Trying to control my brother and sister at the same time. It's hard enough to handle just one of them by themselves, but when Hanami and Shinachiku get together, they bounce all sorts of terrible ideas off of each other. This is one of them.

"Hey, hey!" I grab both of my siblings by the crooks of their elbows, holding back their upraised arms. "Seriously not cool! You can't just use another human as target practice for kunai or knives or forks or whatever!"

Granted, I think Tsunako's probably skilled enough to successfully deflect all of them, but still…pretty rude.

"Ah, I would prefer if you would listen to Minato-kun, please." Tsunako-san calmly answered, her voice not betraying any nervousness. "I'd like to start making the noodle dough, and I would prefer to have my full concentration for that…and I'd rather not make a mess and get knives and silverware scattered about on the floor…"

Homemade dough for ramen noodles is pretty hard to make. It's a time-consuming process and entails kneading flour with gradual amounts of water and alkaline salt—alkaline salt being something that stings the hands when touched without a glove, and what inevitably makes the dough exceptionally stubborn and hard to work with after a few minutes of kneading. I've made ramen dough by hand before, but honestly, it's usually better to just save yourself the stress and get some fresh-frozen or air-dried noodles instead.

"Fine, fine." Shinachiku sighed, setting down all of his makeshift weapons and disarming Nami with a pluck of his index finger and thumb. "It's immature, you're right, I shouldn't be doing it in the house. I'll stop…"

He tossed the last knife in his hands up in the air…

"…On one condition." Nii-san caught the knife in the air with his pointer finger, balancing the tip of the blade with his fingertip, no blood drawn. "Nako-chan—take off the psycho killer mask already. We're off-duty right now, you don't need to cover your face up. Those things get stuffy, anyway."

"Technically, I am within Naruto-sama's Household." Tsunako countered. "Which means I am obligated to—"

"—Technically, you're inside a house that you've been in before—plenty of times before—and long, long before either of us joined Anbu." Shinachiku fired right back at her, shrugging with a grin. "In fact, if you can remember back that far, I used to drag you here with me before either of us even entered the Academy. You weren't wearing a mask when we played together way back when. You're not hiding anything by wearing one now."

I have seen Tsunako-san's face before, and I can attest she has nothing to be ashamed of in that category—far from it, in fact—but she's an absolute stickler for following the rules, even when there are virtually no consequences to be had from breaking them. Meanwhile, Shinachiku was the complete opposite. He never wore his mask, and only knew the rules as to go against them.

They were childhood friends, but they were also night and day. It was an unusual kinship, one that could only be afforded by those who could look beyond each other's flaws.

—Shinachiku flips the knife that he's balancing on his hand with a few deft flicks of the wrist, recatching it again and again, each time the pointed end of the blade landing on a different fingertip, never cutting him or drawing blood. It's feels dangerous and stupid just to look at. He could very easily slice something off if he misses the mark or puts just a little too much force into it.

"Put your hair down for just a little bit, alright?" He smiled, gently this time, without any mocking or provocation. Shinachiku had a gentle smile in his arsenal too; along with all the wild, smirking, and Dad-style ones. He just didn't use it as often. "You'll kill yourself with stress if you try to be the perfect woman all the time in every way."

"…I would still prefer not to, Shinachiku-sama." Tsunako changes the formality levels in how she addresses Shinachiku, a pretty clear attempt to distance herself from her personal relationships and her official duties. When she was first appointed to Anbu, she started addressing all of us with the '-sama' suffix, up until we had to tell her to stop and go back to speaking to us the way she did before.

"That a fact?" Shinachiku's smile doesn't change, neither does his tone. "In that case, it's an order. As your squad leader and as the Anbu Commander. From now on, bare your face during your time spent with us on the private floors of the Hokage Mansion, Tsunako-san."

Shinachiku never calls her 'Tsunako-san'…in fact, he doesn't ever refer to anyone with a '-san', unless he's being sarcastic or trying to prove a point. It's the latter in this case.

"…Is that so…" Tsunako slowly acknowledged. Anbu are obligated to follow certain traditions, but they're also obligated to follow their superiors' orders without question. For someone who is strictly by the book, this presented a dilemma.

"Please?" Shinachiku tilted his head, keeping the same smile all throughout, trying to push her into accepting it. "You're practically family, as far as I see it."

"Practically family…" Tsunako sighs for some reason, disappointed at something in my brother's words. A rare type of expression out of her, one that could possibly be interpreted as a form of complaining. "…Very well, I understand." She answers, after some time.

She places her fingers against featureless porcelain covering her face—

'I order you to take off that mask and chill out right now'…if I could only train a certain bug girl I know to listen to that command…

—her mask unclicks against its fastenings, falling into her hand—

A long bang of hair, between the colors of black and brown, fell flat between her eyes, brushing against the side of her nose and ending with a lateral curl. Tsunako's face was one of delicate features, soft skin, unprominent cheekbones, and a gentle smile without dimples. A 'traditional beauty', as old folk would put it. I'm not really one to categorize how girls look myself, but I think I can attest that she's good-looking at least. Not that that has any effect on me. She's more of an older sister as far as I see it.

She definitely has that 'wise mother, loving wife' look down pat…

…And of course, she also has the lavender-colored Byakugan eyes.

Hyuuga Tsunako's father is a branch member of the Hyuuga Family, a man by the name of 'Hyuuga Neji' who fought my Dad in the old Chuunin Exams some thirty years ago, and then narrowly avoided death in The War.

Despite that, and despite there being an heiress in the Main House who exceeded the age of three, Tsunako's forehead is bare; without the four-pronged manji of the Hyuuga Clan's cursed seal. She was the first member of the Branch House to be born after certain laws forbidding it were made. There's some tension thanks to that.

The Hyuuga Clan and my own family…do not get along very well. One of the first things Dad did when he became Hokage was make good on a promise some years ago about changing one of the Hyuuga's ancient practices. Traditionally, the village leaders do not openly interfere with the clans' internal affairs—and especially not noble clans. And especially not when there are four other villages that can overhear about it, especially not when those other villages might dangle certain promises in front of the disgraced clan's eyes in exchange for an eventual backstabbing. And especially not right after a seventeen-year-old Genin, with no political backing, rose to power thanks to popular support and just plain being stronger than everyone else.

And especially not when another one of Konoha's noble clans with special eyes had been meddled with in the past. A clan which was slaughtered on the orders of a village higher-up—one that was part of some backroom conspiracy named after a tree, or something.

Walking right up to the Hyuuga Clan's Head and demanding they change their centuries-old tradition of the cursed seal because I'm the Hokage and I say so—that goes against basic politics and common sense, as well as the unanimous opinion of the Village Council at the time. It's not something the Hokage is supposed to do. But Dad did it anyway, because that's just the way he is.

Even the majority of the Hyuuga's Branch House protested the Main House's rights beings stepped over. Personally, I can't say I support a form lifelong subservience backed by the threat of supernatural torture and death—enslavement, depending on your choice of words—but I think I can understand why the veiny-eye people were so upset.

—On top of banning the Hyuuga's Branch Family Seal, Dad also declined a political marriage that was offered to him shortly after that would have patched things up. The woman that was offered up was the same age and a member of the Main House, and apparently also quite smitten with my Old Man at the time, too. But instead, Dad rejected their offer and chose to marry for love over duty. Not the smartest move for garnering political capital, but then again I wouldn't exist if he didn't marry Mom, so I don't think I can criticize.

Now, all of this being said, internal attitudes towards the Caged Bird Seal were already changing in the years leading up to my father taking office, and it's been over two decades since the changes took place. I don't think there's anyone in the Main House today that wants to return to the old ways. More than anything, it was a wounding of pride when Dad decided to ban all new inscriptions of the cursed seal and outlaw the activation of all existing seals, not an ideological one. And the Hyuuga have benefitted from Postwar prosperity the same as everyone else. And as easy as it would be to paint an entire group of people as irrational jerks, the reality is that they are thinking human beings too, with their own cognitive ability to weigh the pros and cons of their potential actions.

In other words—our relationship with the Hyuuga Clan isn't so bad that they're going to rebel, or anything drastic like that. It's more like we're not invited over for dinner. And there's still a few of them that are cool with us. Tsunako's dad—that guy that Dad once fought in the Chuunin exams during the War Era—is on good terms with ours. So is that Main House girl that Dad was supposed to have an arranged marriage with—I've met her a few times before, she's a really sweet lady, and she eventually ended up getting together with someone else. I'm friends with her son.

And of course, there's also this particular Hyuuga right here, who's anything but tense around our family—

"—Minato-kun." Tsunako called out to me, her thin arms pressing strongly into the hard ramen dough, expertly rolling in all of the crumbly flour into one consistent shape. "If it's not too much trouble, could you peel the eggs for me and marinate them?"

"Ah, hai." I answer, doing what she asks. She's already gotten as far as the six-and-a-half minute boiling in hot water to the post-boil cooling in ice water, I just need to be an extra pair of hands and finish the last two steps.

—I crack one egg against the metal side of the pot, lightly, as to not contuse and rip the egg white and yolk. I don't quite get all of the shell off, so I have to pick the rest off with my fingers.

I prefer my soft-boiled eggs to be unflavored in shouyu ramen—you know, since there's already a bunch of soy sauce, and you're just muting the other flavor my adding more—but a soy sauce and mirin marinade goes really well with the ramen eggs in other types. The timings for your marinades for ajitsuke eggs can vary pretty greatly—here we'll probably just do a quick dip and then call it good. When doing tonkotsu ramen, I usually go for the 24-hour marinade and let the soy sauce soak the entire egg white and permeate the yolk. You can get a really strong burst of flavor from using one of those in the final bowl.

—Once I get all the little cracked bits of eggshell off, I drop it into the egg bath I whisked earlier, rolling it around in the dark brown so I get an even distribution across the surface. I grab the next egg and crack it—

—I hear Tsunako-san diligently dusting down the countertop with flour to roll out the ramen dough.

"Haa—!" In a misuse of her gentle palms taijutsu, she karate chops the hard dough into eight symmetrical pieces. She doesn't seem to have any qualms with using her clan's techniques for something as menial as that.

…I wonder how she really feels about it. Underneath all that politeness.

The Cursed Seal of the Hyuuga Clan cannot be removed. The seal is etched as permanently inside the brain as it is on the forehead. Dad's tried to find a way to undo it. He's had a team of fuuinjutsu specialists research several possible methods. The secret texts of the Hyuuga Clan have also been dug up and consulted. They all give the same answer. Attempting to alter it results in traumatic brain shock and death of the bearer. The ancestors of the Hyuuga knew what they were doing when they first invented the Caged Bird Seal in the Sengoku Jidai. If there was a built-in a way to undo it, an enemy clan might've been able to find out about it and use it to obtain the Byakugan for themselves, or a branch family might've used it to rebel against the Main.

Even if Tsunako does not have the cursed seal herself, and even if there will not ever be another born to that destiny, she still has to live with the fact that her father does. Even if his daughter was spared the same fate, even if the Main House and the Branch have made great strides to narrow that once-insurmountable distance between them—Tsunako's Father will always have the one part of him that he will only ever be able to change with his death.

Is that the worst fate in the world? Nah, probably not. If you know of the Ninja World's true history; then you know of best friends being forced to kill each other, rival clans striking at each other's children, fathers sending assassins after their own sons—but nevertheless, I think it begs a serious question:

Why is Hyuuga Tsunako so devoted to us? Why does she choose to be in such personal service to the Hokage and his Family, when she's an accomplished enough shinobi to be anywhere else? I guess if you were against the fact and wanted to make an argument, you could say that all she's done is trade one bird cage for another.

Perhaps it's because she feels indebted to us because Dad saved her father's life and then saved her from a life of servitude, and that she's doing it out of pure gratitude. But honestly, that just sounds unhuman to me. If the combination of reading Prewar history and listening to other Postwar teenagers has taught me anything—it's that we don't go every day thinking about the everyday privileges granted to us, the ones that once didn't exist—rather, we forget about them. If you grow up with a father and without a cursed seal on your forehead, are you going to think about the 'what if it was the other way?' every single day and use it as the principle for how to live your life? Probably not. Normal, happy people don't think of depressing things like that all the time. They're afforded the opportunity to forget.

Maybe it's the complete opposite, and that her service is not out of gratitude towards us, but to spite another. Perhaps by obeying us, lowering herself before us, being nothing but a convenience to us—she was really rebelling, mocking her own blood with her servitude towards another. As if every bow and compliment she gave to the Uzumaki Family was a spit in the face to the Ancestors of the proud Hyuuga Clan. That in every act of humility towards us, she was in actuality humiliating her Elders, seizing open their eyes and shouting—'Look! This is what the strongest of the Hyuuga Clan is! This is all that the pride of the Hyuuga has become—a glorified houseservant to the Hokage. Isn't this what you wished for, a servant?'

Or maybe it's nothing dramatic like that at all. Maybe she's just a kindhearted person, and she finds that life's easiest when she's being her honest self—a woman who enjoys doing kindhearted things. Not all of us in life aspire to be needy equals or have the desire to push others down in the competition to become the sole one who rises to the very top. Some of us enjoy less arrogant pleasures; like modesty, cooperating with others, being the hand that pushes up, and joy in seeing our friends achieve their dreams. I'm not sure if that's the kind of person Tsunako-san is—but I think I can understand where she would be coming from if she were.

"—Minato-kun, if you know where it is, could you get me the strainer? I'm going to start boiling the noodles soon." Our homely Hyuuga asks…how the hell did she flatten all the dough and feed it through the noodle roller so quickly? Elite level ninja are scary when they apply their manual dexterity into the culinary world.

"Yeah, of course I know where it is. Bottom drawer to the left of the oven. Here—" I take it out and offer it towards her. "What do you need a strainer for? Is this some sort of special miso broth where you put a bunch of vegetables in the bottom of the pot or something?"

"It's not for the broth." Tsunako corrects me. "It's for the noodles. Cooling down the ramen's noodles after boiling them helps keep the texture firm and washes out any extra cornstarch that might still be stuck to the surface."

"Cornstarch?" I ask, her answer having led to another question. "And what's that for?"

"Stopping the noodles from sticking together during the cutting process. Apply it to both sides after you've flattened the dough, right before you feed it through the roller. Each noodle will maintain their own individual shape this way." Tsunako elaborates.

"Ahhh, that's why my pitiful bachelor-level noodles were coming out wrong." I sigh. I think I vaguely remember Ayame-san mentioning cornstarch in the starter ramen recipe she explained to me, and my brain just automatically skipped over that information. I'm not a fan of starchy noodles, so I kind of thought I could get away without it. But as long as I don't clumsily clump all of my noodles together in the pre-boil stage, and strain them out with cold water afterwards, I think I could eliminate 80% of the starchy taste on the surface…interesting.

"Well, it is no worry." Tsunako smiled, her gentle expressions finally visible without that mask in the way. Simple, feminine, joy. If there's a complicated reason for her being here, I can't see it. "If you keep trying, then you'll definitely get it one day, I'm sure."

"Hai, hai. Ganbarimasu." I halfheartedly reply.

…As we are having this conversation…

"Hey, Nami. Any luck on deciphering what those two are saying?" Shinachiku leans over to the other cooking illiterate in the room.

"…I like ramen…pork cutlets with miso…Nako-nee's homemade noodles…ahhhhhh…" Drool dribbles out of the corner of Nami's mouth, having short-circuited again.

"…Huh? Hey, you two. You guys broke Nami with your food talk." Shinachiku calls out to us.

"Have you tried the reset button?" I ask.

"Nope. Lemme try." Shinachiku takes a finger and bops Nami on the nose. "Didn't work. She's still not moving."

"Pffffft…" Tsunako suppressed a laugh coming out of the corner of her mouth. It sounds kinda…I dunno, what's the word—'cute'? Not usually the word I'd use for our masked killer here, but that's the best way to describe it.

"Let me handle her then," I say. "I know a trick. Besides, I need to clean the table anyway." I grab a piece of chashu from the pan and dangle it in front of Nami's face. She follows me to the table in a sleepwalk and sits down. Success.

—Tsunako's only the third or fourth strongest member in Anbu, but she's the most diligent and loyal out of all of them. She's trained for assassination, infiltration, covert operations, and anything else that needs to be kept off the record. When necessary, Anbu units can be activated at any time to serve their village and fulfill their purpose. But these days, most days, there are no assassinations to be carried out. That's not to say they never happen—but if you're one of the few ninja in Konohagakure who spends their life training to be the best, and then devote themselves to what is absolutely necessary—chances are you're inadvertently setting yourself up for a career that's 90% sitting on your hands and being ready.

When you pair an exceptionally motivated personality with do-nothing work, it can lead to a lot of idle moments of wasting time and meaningless busybody tasks. Like this stuff that she's doing right now.

Can an elite ninja be happy like that, just being a glorified lapdog? Seems to me like somewhere down the road; they might get sick of it, figure that they're a ninja and not a servant, and hand in their mask.

But that's their choice to make. It's not up to anyone around them to make it for them.

For now, I'm glad that she's so close to our family, even if I don't quite know the entire reason why. We're the harbingers of chaos, and she's infinitely willing to put up with all of it. Our Family is lucky to have her on our side.

"—Shina-kun." Tsunako calls out, in the middle of running water over the noodles. "Could you please get me bowls for the broth? Four of them."

"Sure…Minato, where are the bowls?" Nii-san asks me while my back is turned to both of them.

"Right of the microwave. You used to live here too, you know, and you still halfway do. Thought you'd know by now."

"Lay off me, alright? I usually go out to eat, I'm not a homebody like you." Shinachiku says. "Here, give me a second." I hear him reach into the cabinet for tableware.

—My heightened senses also pick up something else.

The skillful glide of the noodles under the kitchen faucet's stream has suddenly becomes static, hitting only one spot, water spilling out of the strainer at a fixed angle. The constant motion of Tsunako's busybody hands has halted—meaning: she's distracted by something.

—I glance over my shoulder. I use the edge of my eyes to catch a glimpse, as to not interrupt.

Tsunako-san's staring at Shinachiku's back while he's looking the other way. As soon as he turns around, she looks away, pretending like she was looking at something else.

…Well, I can probably guess at one reason why she comes over here all the time.

* * *

**A/N:** Phew. Once I started writing these Uzumaki Sibling chapters, I didn't want to post any until I found a nice point to stop and pick up from later. Hence why it took four months. Skip the A/N if you want.

Tons of strange writing decisions on my part, but I'm personally very happy with the result (even if I could self-criticize for at least 2,000+ words). Definitely not the type of fic that would build a large readership, but that's cool with me. Might get some negative reviews. That's fine too. I'm insanely obstinate about writing the way I want once I get started, and my favorite fics on this site are often peppered with scathing reviews and nerds going 'actually…' when someone gets something wrong. Doesn't matter too much what other people think as long as I enjoy it myself.

Don't have much more to say, so lemme just let you wonderful and beautiful people know how appreciative I am of you for getting this far and sticking with me on this OC-infested, next-gen Narusaku world that I'm trying to figure out. I might write for free, but you're here reading for free. Life's a short and precious thing, you know. I'm glad you chose to spend a bit of it with me here today.

Think that's it. One day I'll do a huge 1,000+ word A/N, might even make a few of you laugh doing it. But as for today; the snow is melted, the roads are clear, and it's a few hours away from morning. Think I'll hop in my puny Hyundai and take a little adventure—

Talk to you later.


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